Analysis: The U.S. government transferred out 9,261 BTC over two days, with 2,456 BTC originating from previously unidentified sources, and LuBian and Bitfinex assets accounting for 71% of holdings.

October 8 — Galaxy Research conducted on-chain tracking of the U.S. government's recent BTC transfers and historical holdings. The U.S. government transferred approximately 9,261 BTC, worth about $770 million, to Coinbase Prime over two days. The focus of this analysis is not whether the funds are about to be sold, but rather using the historical usage of the deposit address to further identify the sources and composition of the U.S. government's current BTC assets.

Since this Coinbase Prime deposit address was first activated in December 2025, it has cumulatively received 11,567 BTC, of which 6,406 came from wallets already labeled as belonging to the U.S. government, and 5,160 came from wallets that had not previously been labeled. Of the 9,261 BTC transferred this time, nearly half can be traced to Bitfinex hacker funds recovered by the U.S. government, while another portion came from previously known Binance-related seized assets; among them, 2,456 BTC previously had no clear government attribution label, but because they entered this Coinbase Prime deposit address along the same path as government funds, Galaxy Research currently regards them as U.S. government seized assets.

After further sorting through the asset composition, the U.S. government currently holds approximately 319,086 BTC, of which about 71% is concentrated in two categories of assets that have not yet fully become the government's final property: LuBian-related BTC and Bitfinex recovered funds.

Among them, in January 2025, a U.S. federal court approved the return in kind of the seized Bitfinex hacker funds to Bitfinex, and the main address holding approximately 94,643 BTC has still not moved. Another portion comes from LuBian-related BTC. In October 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil forfeiture lawsuit against Chen Zhi and related assets, involving approximately 127,271 BTC. This batch of LuBian BTC had already entered addresses attributed to the U.S. government as early as June to July 2024, so its counting begins from that point in time.

From a longer-term perspective, U.S. government-related addresses have received a total of approximately 555,260 BTC since 2013, worth about $16.1 billion at prices at the time; during the same period, approximately 236,173 BTC flowed out, worth about $3.8 billion at prices at the time. After excluding internal transfers between the government's own addresses, this transfer, based on labeled government addresses, ranks 9th among the largest single-day BTC outflows in U.S. government history, and is also the largest since December 2, 2024.

It is worth noting that the transfer of BTC to Coinbase Prime does not necessarily mean the U.S. government has already sold it. Coinbase Prime provides both digital asset custody and trading services, and an on-chain transfer alone cannot confirm the specific purpose of the funds.