As Bitcoin Falls, U.S. Government Sends $1.5 Billion to Exchange in Three Days

About $1.54 billion worth of Bitcoin and WBTC was transferred to Coinbase Prime from wallets linked to the U.S. government over three days, while Bitcoin’s price fell nearly 7% during the same period.

According to an Oct. 9 post by on-chain data platform Lookonchain, addresses said to belong to the U.S. government deposited 17,733 Bitcoin (BTC) and 750 WBTC into Coinbase Prime. The total size of the transactions brought the U.S. government’s crypto asset movements into focus amid a continued market downturn.

$1.54 billion transferred in three days

The transferred Bitcoin was worth about $1.48 billion, while WBTC, the tokenized version of Bitcoin, was worth $62 million. Together, the two assets totaled about $1.54 billion.

Coincided with Bitcoin’s decline

Bitcoin’s price fell 6.9% over the three-day period in which the transfers took place. The activity has raised questions about whether the assets moved to the exchange will be sold.

However, depositing assets on an exchange does not by itself show that a sale has taken place; the post contained no information indicating that the transferred Bitcoin had been sold. Therefore, there is also insufficient data to directly attribute the price decline to these transfers.