Glassnodes displays BTC owned by US Govt and Mt. Gox trustee

In a recent tweet, Glassnodes highlighted the number of cryptocurrencies owned by the US government and Mt. Gox trustee. 

Based on the Glassnodes report, the US government owns about 205,514 BTC. The latter, Mt. Gox trustee, now holds about 137,890 BTC.

The Glassnode’s data charts display the coins the two institutions hold in real-time. Glassnodes shared a screenshot of the amounts held in the past years. 

Based on the charts, the US government held about 60k BTC in 2021. Between Jan and March 2022, the U.S. govt held about 160k BTC based on the Glassnodes. Later, the U.S. government acquired more coins through seizures to hit about 220k BTC in May 2022.

However, since late February 2023, the US government has held just about 205k BTC.

The amounts of BTC held by the US government are proceeds of the seizures. The government has at least seized 120k of Silk Road assets. Furthermore, the U.S. took some significant amounts of BTC from a couple that had stolen 120k coins.

The U.S. has been selling some of its BTC, with Tim Draper among the beneficiaries. The U.S. Marshals Service has sold nearly 200k BTC in over nine auctions. 

Mt. Gox BTC holding 

Glassnodes also shared some data about the number of BTC held by another whale, the Mt. Gox trustee. Mt. Gox was founded as a BTC exchange over a decade ago but later went bankrupt and was left to the hands of a trustee, Kobayashi.

Glassnodes displayed the number of BTC held by the trustee since about 2014. Based on the data, Mt. Gox held over 200k BTC in July 2014 and Jan 2018. However, the platform has been selling some of its BTC since then.

For instance, based on reports, the Mt. Gox trustee sold some amount of BTC to cover creditors‘ claims at the time of bankruptcy. The reports indicate that the Mt. Gox trustee sold about 35,800 BTC between December 2017 and February 2018. 

The reports now suggest that since their last sale, Mt. Gox has been holding on to about 141k BTC. However, based on Glassnodes’ data, the number may have recently reduced to a low of 137k in April 2023. 

As Glassnodes was seemingly announcing the introduction of the two new charts, others were asking about the number of BTC held by Grayscale. As a major industry player running a BTC-connected trust, many investors would also want to track the amounts the network holds.