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Invest3 publishersIndependently confirmed3 min readPublished

Washington's $770 million bitcoin transfer to Coinbase Prime raises questions over no-sale order

US government wallets sent 9,261 bitcoin worth $770 million to Coinbase Prime in two days, according to Galaxy Research. With half from the Bitfinex hack and a 2025 order barring sales, custody or restitution fits the record better than a sale.

The Investor · Invest desk

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Illustration accompanying Washington's $770 million bitcoin transfer to Coinbase Prime raises questions over no-sale order
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What happened

  • Galaxy ranks the Oct. 7 outflow as the government's ninth-largest bitcoin outflow day since 2013 and its biggest since Dec. 2, 2024.
  • Galaxy puts the federal bitcoin balance at 319,086 BTC, down from a peak of 352,587 BTC on Aug. 13, 2024.
  • In July the government moved $297 million in bitcoin and ether to Coinbase Prime, Cointelegraph reported.

Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made

Why it matters

  • constraint Selling these coins would put the Marshals at odds with the March 2025 reserve order. For government bitcoin to hit the market as a sale, the policy would have to be reversed first.
  • exposure If the Bitfinex coins go back to the exchange under the January 2025 court approval, they leave the government's books. Any selling after that is Bitfinex's decision, and Washington's order does not govern it.
  • contradiction Galaxy's assumption that the 2,456 coins were existing seizures and Cointelegraph's report that they may be new ones lead to different conclusions. One means trackers undercounted; the other means the balance grew.
  • constraint Tallies built from wallet labels, Galaxy's included, only count wallets someone has already identified, and about 45% of the deposit address's inflows since December came from unlabeled senders.

At $770 million for 9,261 coins, Galaxy's figures imply a price of about $83,100 a bitcoin [23]. At that price the federal balance is worth roughly $26.5 billion [32], and the transfer is 2.9% of it [24]. Federal wallets have sent out 236,173 BTC across 6,134 transactions since 2013 [17], so this week alone equals 3.9% of every coin Washington has ever sent out [26]. Galaxy's books balance: lifetime receipts of 555,260 BTC minus those outflows leave 319,087 [25], one coin off its stated total.

There are three plausible destinations for the coins, as news.bitcoin.com put it: liquidation, continued custody or restitution [8]. Custody has the most support. Coinbase Prime has held seized assets for the Marshals Service since 2024 [5], and Coinbase sells the Marshals both custody and trading services [6]. A deposit there puts coins where they can be sold, and also where they are simply stored. A sale would conflict with the March 2025 executive order directing seized bitcoin into the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve [7]. Restitution has a court ruling behind it. A federal court approved returning about 94,643 BTC to Bitfinex in January 2025, though the main Bitfinex wallet had not moved when Galaxy published [15].

I think the sale reading, the one behind the liquidation speculation that earlier moves set off [9], is the weakest of the three. The strongest counter-case comes from Galaxy's own breakdown. "Today's balance by case. 71% sits in two buckets that are not settled government property: the Lubian coins and the Bitfinex recoveries," Galaxy wrote [14]. As the sources describe it, the order covers seized coins bound for the reserve [7]. Coins a court awards back to Bitfinex leave the government's books, and what reaches the market after that is up to Bitfinex. The view is wrong if coins leave the Prime deposit address with no restitution filing or official explanation. Cointelegraph has asked the Marshals and the Justice Department for comment [20].

Those 2,456 coins from unlabeled wallets [3] are worth about $204 million at the implied price [27], or 0.77% of Galaxy's balance [28]. "But 2,456 BTC came from previously unknown holdings, which we now assume were USG seizures because they deposited into the USG Coinbase Prime deposit address," Galaxy wrote [33]. The link rests on where the coins landed and has not been independently established [34]. Cointelegraph's account of the same post says the coins may be new law-enforcement seizures [4]. New seizures would mean the balance grew. Old wallets nobody had labeled would mean trackers counted low. The wider gap is at the deposit address itself. About 5,160 of the 11,567 BTC it has taken in since December 2025 came from unlabeled senders [12], roughly 45% of inflows [29] and 1.6% of Galaxy's total [30].

The two contested cases decide most of the supply question. The named figures, 94,643 Bitfinex coins and 127,271 Lubian coins linked to Chen Zhi [15] [16], sum to 221,914 BTC, about 69.5% of the balance and a shade under Galaxy's 71% [21]. The Lubian coins are the subject of a Justice Department civil forfeiture complaint from October 2025 [16]. Roughly 97,000 BTC sit outside both cases [22]. The balance is down 33,501 BTC, or 9.5%, from its August 2024 peak [31]. The Marshals auctioned the Silk Road coins between 2013 and 2015, and seizures have outpaced sales since 2020 [18].

What to watch

  • Whether the coins leave the Coinbase Prime deposit address, and whether a restitution filing or a Marshals or Justice Department statement comes with that move.
  • Movement in the main Bitfinex wallet, which was still idle when Galaxy published despite the January 2025 court approval to return about 94,643 BTC.
  • The October 2025 civil forfeiture case over the 127,271 Lubian coins, which will decide whether they become settled government property.

Clarity's read

What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Insufficient
Hype gap+10
Incentives
Insufficient
Confidence50
Why these scores

Claim ledger

Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.

  1. [1]

    The U.S. government transferred approximately 9,261 BTC, valued at $770 million, to Coinbase Prime on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to Galaxy Research.

    ReportedSupportedSource: Galaxy Research, via news.bitcoin.com2 sources— create a free account to open themView cited source
  2. [2]

    Of the 9,261 BTC transferred over two days, half was recovered from the Bitfinex hackers and another portion stemmed from known Binance seizures, Galaxy Research wrote in a Thursday X post.

    ReportedSupportedSource: Galaxy Research, via Cointelegraph2 sources— create a free account to open themView cited source
  3. [3]

    Another 2,456 BTC came from wallets Galaxy had not previously identified as U.S. government holdings.

    ReportedSupportedSource: Galaxy Research, via news.bitcoin.com2 sources— create a free account to open themView cited source

Sources

3 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.

  1. cointelegraph.com

    1 article · October 8, 2026

    US government moves $770M of seized Bitcoin to Coinbase Prime
  2. crypto.news

    1 article · October 8, 2026

    U.S. government sends $770M BTC to Coinbase, why now?
  3. news.bitcoin.com

    1 article · October 8, 2026

    US Government Shifts $770M in Bitcoin as Mystery Wallets Emerge

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