Addresses tracked as US government holdings moved bitcoin on Tuesday for the first time since August 26, sending a combined 833.6 BTC worth a little more than $71 million toward Coinbase Prime.
On-chain attribution ties the coins to two separate forfeiture matters: the Potapenko-Turogin fraud prosecution and bitcoin recovered from the 2016 Bitfinex hack.
The particular sequence was recently first flagged by Sani, the operator of TimechainIndex.com, in posts on X as the transactions confirmed.
A government-labeled wallet began with a dust transfer of 0.00115539 BTC into Coinbase Prime, then shifted 264.86266831 BTC into a fresh address.
Sani described that pair of moves as a likely test ahead of a larger shipment.
Later the same day, the remaining funds from that batch reached Coinbase Prime.
A subsequent transfer of 568 BTC, valued at roughly $48.7 million, also landed at Coinbase Prime and brought the day’s bitcoin total to 833.6 BTC.
The smaller of the two bitcoin lots is associated with coins seized in the Bitfinex case. In August 2016, attackers drained about 120,000 BTC from the exchange.
Investigators later identified Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, recovered a large share of the stolen coins, and placed roughly 94,636 BTC under government control.
The larger lot matches addresses labeled as forfeited funds from the Potapenko-Turogin matter.
🚨🚨🚨The U.S. Government just sent another 568 BTC, worth approximately $48.7M, to Coinbase Prime.
That brings today’s total transfers to 833.6 BTC.https://t.co/zKzvL3jLls https://t.co/aLJQkqmZSZ pic.twitter.com/bNCJkMtFAQ
— Sani | TimechainIndex.com (@TimechainIndex) October 6, 2026
Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin ran Hashflare, a cloud-mining business that sold hashrate contracts customers believed were backed by real machines.
Prosecutors concluded the data centers did not contain the equipment being sold and that the operation had taken in hundreds of millions of dollars under false pretenses.
The same window of activity included BNB drawn from assets tied to the FTX bankruptcy.
After a small test of 0.127 BNB, government-linked wallets moved 40,285.07 BNB, worth about $31.63 million. Unlike the bitcoin, that BNB did not settle at Coinbase Prime.
It passed through unlabeled intermediary addresses before resting at an external wallet.
Blockchain intelligence firms, including Arkham, independently matched the bitcoin origins: about 264.9 BTC from the Bitfinex seizure and about 568.7 BTC from the Potapenko/Turogin forfeiture, with the BNB traced to Alameda Research assets.
Coinbase Prime is the institutional custody and trading arm federal agencies already use for certain seized digital assets.
The US Marshals Service, which administers many of these wallets, has contracted the platform for custody and execution services rather than relying solely on the public auctions that once disposed of recovered bitcoin.
A deposit there can therefore reflect internal bookkeeping, preparation for restitution, or a later sale.
Chain data alone does not show whether any of Tuesday’s coins were sold.
After the transfers, government-linked addresses still held on the order of 324,000 BTC, valued near $27.7 billion, plus smaller positions in other tokens.
The 833.6 BTC that moved represents well under 1 percent of that stock. No agency has announced a liquidation connected to these transactions, and a 2025 executive order directs that forfeited bitcoin designated for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve not be sold.
