From the increasingly ferocious federal crackdown on the cryptocurrency business, it might appear the U.S. government cannot stand digital currencies. Yet there is a love-hate dynamic: the Treasury is sitting on a stash of 207,189 bitcoin, worth $5 billion, by far the largest such state-owned hoard.
While many other countries have been disposing of their crypto, according to new research provided exclusively to Forbes, the U.S. has been steadily adding to its supply as a result of asset seizures. Last year, the U.S. held 69,640 bitcoins according to the research a doctoral thesis by Sachin Jaitly, a general partner at investment advisor Morgan Creek Capital. That’s 94% of the bitcoin in global government coffers at the time.
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Leslie Sammis, a Tampa-based criminal defense lawyer whose practice includes several Binance seizure cases, says that it is more likely that Justice Department bureaucrats are waiting for more clarity on cryptocurrencies in general. “I think they probably have decided that they need Congress to make a law or the Department of Justice needs to come out with some policy before they start moving all those assets around,” says Sammis.
Source: U.S. Government Owns Way More Bitcoin Than Any Other Country–So Why Aren’t They Selling It?
