US Government Moves $1 Billion in Bitcoin Seized From Bitfinex Hacker

JUST IN: US government moves $1 billion in Bitcoin seized from the Bitfinex hacker, transferring 12,267 BTC to a new unlabeled address as $BTC slides to around $81,000.

The US government just moved a billion dollars in Bitcoin, and nobody knows where it's going.

Twelve thousand two hundred and sixty seven coins, seized from the Bitfinex hacker, transferred to a brand new address with no label on it. This is the stash from the 2016 Bitfinex hack, one of the biggest seizures in Justice Department history, and it has mostly sat still for years. Until today.

And the timing, honestly, could not be worse. Bitcoin is already sliding, trading around eighty one thousand, down near three percent on the day, and the whole market is bleeding with it. So when traders see a government wallet wake up and shuffle a billion dollars, the first thought is always the same. Are they about to sell.

To be fair, an unlabeled transfer isn't a sale. It could be custody housekeeping. But every government coin that moves makes this market flinch, and today it flinched at eighty one grand.

This is Kateryna Kovalenko, reporting for HIT.