Government-Linked $1 Billion Bitcoin Transfer Led to Coinbase Prime Addresses

A wallet Arkham identifies as holding U.S. government-seized bitcoin moved roughly $1.01 billion on Oct. 8, with subsequent transactions routing the funds to addresses the blockchain analytics firm labels Coinbase Prime deposits.

The original transaction, confirmed at 9:33:50 a.m. ET, created outputs totaling 12,267.02329833 $BTC. Almost all went to an unlabeled address, while 0.0012 $BTC went directly to an Arkham-labeled Coinbase Prime deposit address. Arkham valued the transaction at about $1.01 billion.

The subsequent trail establishes an exchange-linked destination for the bitcoin, rather than simply a move into an unidentified wallet. It does not establish a sale: Coinbase Prime provides both custody and trading services, so the destination alone cannot distinguish storage from liquidation.

The sending address was `bc1qkmk4v2xn29yge68fq6zh7gvfdqrvpq3v3p3y0s`, which Arkham labels “Bitfinex Hacker Seized Funds” under its U.S. Government entity. The large output—12,267.02209833 $BTC—went to `bc1qrufsercy84xz0es4nraxkujq04365l5wqajqpf`. Mempool.space independently records the addresses and amounts; the ownership attribution comes from Arkham.

That large output was spent in a further transaction, which made another small deposit and moved the remainder onward. The following transactions sent 3,000 $BTC and another 3,000 $BTC to the same Coinbase-labeled address used in the initial transfer.

A third 3,000 $BTC tranche, followed by the remaining approximately 3,267 $BTC, went to `3A18G8hu5n6vSg8RDAj2D31TGDAE1t4ya8`. Arkham labels that address a Coinbase Prime deposit address as well.

The distinction matters because the government already has a custody relationship with the platform. Coinbase announced in July 2024 that the U.S. Marshals Service selected Prime to provide custody and advanced trading services for its large-cap digital assets.