Some $6.3 million in BTC would have been liquidated reasonably than saved as state financial savings.
The liquidation ignores a earlier memo that known as for not pursuing cryptocurrency mixing providers.
The US Division of Justice (DOJ) has reportedly liquidated tens of millions of {dollars} in bitcoin (BTC), regardless of a presidential order expressly prohibiting such gross sales. This could possibly be interpreted as a direct problem to White Home coverage, as mirrored in a report printed on January 5, 2026.
The US authorities would have bought belongings valued at $6.3 million, as a substitute of together with these funds as a part of the newly created bitcoin Strategic Reserve with confiscated digital belongings.
The funds in query come from Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, co-founders of cryptocurrency mixing service Samourai Pockets. In August 2025, each pleaded responsible to conspiracy to function an unlicensed cash transmission enterprise. As a part of their settlement with justice, the developer couple transferred roughly 57.5 BTC to the US Marshals Service (USMS) final November, as revealed in a report by Bitcoin Journal.
Nonetheless, the digital path means that these cash had been by no means saved. Paperwork included within the report below the title “Asset Liquidation Settlement” point out that the funds had been meant on the market.
The information on chain verify that the funds had been despatched to a pockets linked to Coinbase Prime, which at present reveals a stability of zero, which means that the liquidation would have already been executed.
If the sale has been accomplished, this transfer locations the Division of Justice in an uncomfortable place vis-à-vis the chief department. It is because on March 6, 2025, President Trump signed Govt Order 14233. As reported by CriptoNoticias, this measure is a part of a pillar of his financial coverage that establishes that any BTC acquired via prison confiscation “won’t be bought” and have to be built-in into the nationwide Strategic Reserve as an asset of long-term worth.
As famous within the Bitcoin Journal report, there was no authorized obligation to promote these belongings. Beneath present forfeiture statutes, the federal government has the facility to protect property in its authentic type. The choice to transform them to money it seems to have been an administrative alternative, not a judicial mandate.
Thus far, neither the Division of Justice nor the Marshals Service have issued official statements to make clear whether or not this transfer was an administrative error or an indication of inside resistance in opposition to the brand new US digital asset coverage.
Nonetheless, the motion of funds admits one other studying. It could possibly be a easy administrative process between places of work and never a ultimate sale in the marketplace. One other blind spot is the character of the seizure, because the case doc means that prosecutors might have handled these funds as a high quality derived from the confession of the accusedand never as a standard confiscation. The small print of this authorized ambiguity will be discovered within the indictment doc, which sheds mild on the destiny of the belongings.
The case takes on particular relevance as a result of historical past of independence of the Southern District of New York (SDNY), the prosecutor’s workplace that led the case in opposition to Samourai. The SDNY has beforehand proven outstanding autonomy, transferring ahead with this course of regardless of a Division of Justice memo issued in April 2025, which prompt stopping pursuing cryptocurrency pockets and mixing providers for the actions of their finish customers.
