The US government is once again active on the blockchain, moving approximately $606,000 worth of bitcoin to Coinbase Prime.
These are not just any coins. On-chain data suggests the transferred 8 BTC is linked to Ilya Lichtenstein, the man behind the decade-old hack of OG exchange Bitfinex, according to data tracked by Arkham.
Transfers to exchanges are often interpreted as a sign of potential selling pressure. However, this is not always the case and may also reflect routine wallet movements, changes in custody or other non-selling activity.
These coins have destination
The bitcoin linked to the Bitfinex hack, which saw Lichtenstein walk away with 119,756 BTC, has a court-mandated destination, and it’s not the US Treasury.
In early 2025, federal procedures strengthened the restitution of the seized assets in kind to Bitfinex, requiring the government to return the coins instead of liquidating them independently.
Bitfinex intends to use the returned funds to fully redeem all outstanding Recovery Right Tokens – digital claims issued to customers who suffered losses in the hack – and to allocate at least 80% of the remaining net proceeds to repurchase and burn its UNUS SED LEO token.
The 2016 hack
In August 2016, Lichtenstein hacked into Bitfinex and fraudulently authorized more than 2,000 transactions and transferred 119,756 BTC to a wallet under his control. At the time, the exploit was worth about $72 million. (As of today it would be worth $8.9 billion)
What followed were years of sophisticated money laundering via crypto mixers, darknets and chain hopping between coins, as well as buying gold.
Finally, in 2022, investigators caught up and seized part of the stolen BTC, then worth $3.6 billion. In 2024, Lichtenstein was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison and was released in January 2026 under the First Step Act, President Donald Trump thanked the X.
However, the stolen coins remained in the custody of the government. The US said last year that its holdings of seized BTC would be included in a national strategic bitcoin reserve. At the time of writing, the government holds about $24.54 billion worth of bitcoin, about $146 million worth of ether, and several other cryptocurrencies.
