The US government transferred nearly $4M of seized bitcoins to Coinbase

The US government transferred 58.742 BTC – worth nearly $4 million – to crypto exchange Coinbase on Monday.

According to the latest data compiled by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, the transfer originated from the address “US Government: Ryan Farace Seized Funds,” identified on the blockchain as 3B2jEBZi8fJWGEDrh6Pe7hDMaJ6iGfFtaU.

Those funds were taken three years ago from Maryland resident Ryan Phares, who was charged in 2018 with selling alprazolam, a generic form of Xanax, on the dark web.

Subsequently, Ryan's father, Joseph Phares, was indicted on federal charges of illegally and illegally diverting bitcoin proceeds. The Department of Justice eventually obtained 2,933 BTC from the father and son pair and announced plans to liquidate the holdings in January of this year.

Ryan Fares was sentenced to 54 months while his father received 19 months for the same charge.

Liquidity through Coinbase is unlikely to have a significant impact on spot prices, unlike the recent BTC sale in the German state of Saxony.

On June 19, the German state of Saxony began downloading confiscated bitcoins it captured from movie piracy website movie2k. In the year On July 12, he sold nearly 50,000 BTC of his entire coin, raising nearly $2.87 billion in the process. This brisk selling resulted in a gain of more than $740 million, compared to $2.13 billion in purchases in January.

However, the sell-off put significant bearish pressure on the market, with the price of bitcoin even briefly falling below $55,000.

At the time of writing, BTC was trading around $67,000, where it has been for the past week or so.