The United States government is one of the biggest cryptocurrency holders alongside other global states like the United Kingdom and Germany, according to data from Arkham.
Arkham, a crypto intelligence platform focused on deanonymizing entities on the blockchain network, has introduced a dashboard featuring the governments with the largest crypto holdings.
Announcing the news on April 12, Arkham said that the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany are “some of the largest countries” in terms of crypto holdings.
With the new Arkham tracking tool, individuals can observe the real-time balance and transaction history for cryptocurrencies held by governments.
According to the data, the U.S. government is the biggest Bitcoin (BTC) whale among global states tracked by Arkham, holding as much as 212,847 BTC at the time of writing, worth around $15 billion based on the current prices.
In addition to BTC, the U.S. government also holds around $200 million in other cryptocurrencies like Ether (ETH), as well as major stablecoins like USDC (USDC) and Tether (USDT).
The U.K. government, ranked second, holds 61,245 BTC at the time of writing, worth around $4.5 billion, according to Arkham’s data. The German government owns 49,858 BTC, equivalent to roughly $3.5 billion at the time of writing.
The government of El Salvador — the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender in September 2021 — holds significantly less BTC than other countries tracked by Arkham.
According to the data, the Salvadoran government holds 5,717 BTC, worth $405 million at the time of writing.
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The release of Arkham’s dashboard of top governments by Bitcoin holdings marks an important milestone in transparency of cryptocurrency assets owned by whales like country states.
At the same time, it has been a while since the public found out about massive BTC holdings by the United States government.
The dashboard also points to the fact that the U.S. continued to accumulate Bitcoin in the past few years. Since early 2023, the U.S. government has added at least 5,000 BTC, based on Arkham’s data and previous reports.
A significant part of the U.S. government Bitcoin holdings comes from confiscations related to darkweb market Silk Road, its hacker Jimmy Zhong, as well as the hackers of crypto exchange Bitfinex.
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