The US strategic Bitcoin reserve project has been at a standstill since Donald Trump’s election. This is especially true if the Department of Justice fails to comply with its decree by selling the BTC seized in the Samurai Wallet case.
Did the US sell the BTC seized from Samurai Wallet?
During Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, the promise of building a strategic Bitcoin reserve whetted the appetite for returns—and votes—of cryptocurrency enthusiasts with the prospect of the US government buying BTC en masse.
But what was supposed to be a historic accumulation quickly took the form of a more timid and disappointing conservation of BTC seized during legal proceedings, with a portfolio currently estimated at just under $31 billion (328,372 BTC).
This amount puts the United States at the top of the list of Bitcoin-holding countries, far ahead of China (190,000 BTC) and the United Kingdom (61,245 BTC). Donald Trump promised—when he signed a historic executive order last March—that all seized BTC would be added to this strategic reserve.
This commitment appears to have been broken by the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), according to information available on the blockchain monitoring site Arkham Intelligence.
At issue is a $6.15 million (57.5 BTC) transfer to the institutional cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Prime, dated November 3, involving bitcoins seized in the Samurai Wallet case.
A strategic Bitcoin reserve that is struggling to take shape
According to available information, this case began more specifically with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) negotiating the sale of BTC held by Samurai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill as part of their guilty pleas.
The seizure was recorded as a reimbursement of legal costs incurred by the US Department of Justice for the Southern District of New York, which is handling the case. And, in all likelihood, the latter intends to recover the millions of dollars in question, in defiance of the decree issued by Donald Trump a few months earlier.
It is impossible to know whether the BTC involved has actually been sold at the time of writing. However, an internal DOJ document entitled “Asset Liquidation Agreement,” recently made public by Bitcoin Magazine, clearly states that the transaction must take place.
This situation is not really surprising, as it appears that the New York Department of Justice—also known as the “sovereign district of New York”—is accustomed to this type of procedure being carried out without any government authorization, even though it is part of a federal system.
In any case, this case brings to the forefront the obvious lack of progress on this national strategic reserve project in Bitcoin, despite it being widely promoted and championed by Republican politicians and the Trump administration. And for good reason: they can’t even manage to hold on to the seized BTC.
