Notes · Oct-11 2026

US government bitcoin went to Coinbase Prime

From Oct-06 to Oct-08 2026, addresses attributed to the US government moved 21,528 BTC into Coinbase Prime deposit addresses. All three waves went to the same place: 833.6 BTC on Oct-06, 8,427.6 BTC on Oct-07, 12,267.0 BTC on Oct-08. The three add to 21,528.2 BTC.

Each wave began with test deposits of about 0.001 BTC (0.0010–0.0015), then the coins went into the deposit addresses and were swept into the Coinbase Prime hot wallet. The 12,267.0 BTC wave was first reported as going to unlabeled wallets; the same trace puts those coins in the same place as the other two.

The hops are traced on-chain: out of the sending addresses, into the deposit addresses, swept into the hot wallet. The labels rest on public attribution and on matching an earlier deposit. Coinbase Prime holds and trades seized crypto for the US Marshals, so this is custody, not a confirmed sale. A sale can still follow from there. What happens after the hot wallet is not on the chain, so we print the move and the destination, and stop at the venue's door.

One address attributed to the US government holds 94,643 BTC seized in 2022. It has sat unspent since Feb-01 2022, spent 0 as of the Oct-10 05:00Z measurement. We measured this one address only; it is not a count of all government holdings. With spent 0, none of the three waves came from it.

What we measure next: on 2026-11-11, whether the 94,643 BTC seized in 2022 have moved.

The daily total for the exchanges we map ourselves, same days, is on our exchange-netflow chart; it does not single out this path.

We grade this on 2026-11-11: re-check whether the 94,643 BTC seized in 2022 have moved

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