12,267 Seized Bitcoin Move to Unlabeled Addresses, No Sale Shown

One transaction on Thursday morning moved 12,267 BTC out of a wallet that blockchain intelligence firm Arkham labels as holding bitcoin seized from the 2016 Bitfinex hack. Decrypt and TFTC both time it at 9:33 a.m. ET on 8 October. Four accounts put the value at about $1.01 billion, though the bitcoin price each used to get there does not match. No account says the coins were sold. Where they went is the part the reporting splits on.

One transfer, two incompatible readings

CoinDesk reported on Thursday that the coins landed at a new, unlabeled address, with no exchange deposit recorded. It read the pattern as closer to housekeeping than to a sale. Crypto Briefing was flatter still: "None of the coins landed on an exchange." Decrypt adds that Arkham marks both outputs as already spent, so the coins have moved on again. CryptoSlate tells it differently. Citing Galaxy Research and the tracker EmberCN, it says 9,000 BTC worth about $739 million reached Coinbase Prime, with 3,267 BTC unaccounted for. Those two pictures cannot both be right. CryptoSlate never mentions Arkham, and the other three never mention EmberCN.

"No sale has been confirmed and neither the DOJ nor US Marshals has offered any explanation," TFTC's newsdesk wrote on Thursday.

That non-response is TFTC's account alone.

The tallies around it do not add up

Thursday's transfer was the largest of several. Galaxy Research, whose tracking of decade-dormant wallets works the same way, counted about 9,261 BTC, roughly $770 million, reaching Coinbase Prime in the days around it. About 2,456 BTC of that came from wallets it had not previously classified as government-held. The dates differ by outlet: Bitcoin.com places the batch on Tuesday and Wednesday, CryptoSlate on 6 and 7 October, TFTC on 7 and 8 October.

The totals are worse. TFTC reports roughly 17,795 BTC, about $1.5 billion, for 6 to 8 October, while carrying the 12,267 and 9,261 figures that sum to 21,528. Bitcoin.com's three-day arithmetic comes to about $1.78 billion. Three different three-day totals went out the same afternoon. None reconciles with another.

Wednesday's deposits come in three shapes too. CoinDesk put them at about 3,200 BTC, some $264 million, alongside $119 million in USDT from wallets Arkham ties to the Bitfinex seizure and to the FTX estate, whose $11 billion forfeiture is itself under challenge. Decrypt said about 2,574 BTC with the same USDT figure. Bitcoin.com reported 94.149 million USDT instead. We could not establish which tally supersedes which.

What a deposit at Coinbase Prime does not prove

Coinbase Prime sells custody as well as execution, and that is the reason three of these outlets stop short of calling any of it a sale. A deposit there can be a change of custodian. Bitcoin.com reports that Arkham sources "reportedly say" most of the funds ended up at Coinbase, hedged in its own text and carried nowhere else. CryptoSlate, for its part, says the transfers do not prove a liquidation.

A court order would be the clean explanation, and the accounts split there as well. Bitcoin.com says a January 2025 approval for returning recovered assets to Bitfinex could cover the movement, while adding that chain data cannot confirm restitution. TFTC says no such ruling has been publicly established. Neither cites a docket. Crypto Briefing puts the 2016 hack at 119,754 coins and TFTC at 119,756; roughly 94,000 were seized in 2022 from Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan.

How much is left depends on who is counting

Arkham's estimate of the remainder is about $25.5 billion on CoinDesk's and Crypto Briefing's accounts. Decrypt, citing the same firm, gives 306,795 BTC worth roughly $24.85 billion. TFTC says Arkham snapshots run between about 319,000 and 328,000 BTC; Galaxy, carried by CryptoSlate, puts it at 319,086.

What would settle Thursday's question is narrow. An exchange deposit traced out of the new addresses, or a filing naming the destination, would end it. Neither has appeared, and those addresses have already spent what they received. A public ledger shows what left and what arrived. It does not show intent, and nothing here establishes one.