Cynthia Lummis receives scathing pushback over federal coffers originally appeared on TheStreet .
Confusion over the U.S. government's Bitcoin holdings seemed to arise recently as several publications reported that the American government has sold more than 80% of its BTC holdings.
What happened was that an independent journalist, known as @L0la L33tz on X, requested the U.S. Marshals Service to reveal its BTC holdings under the Freedom of Information Act. The agency informed that it held only $3.4 billion in 28,988 forfeited BTC, the journalist shared on July 16.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), who co-authored the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill, also expressed her shock over the reports that the government has sold more than 80% of its Bitcoin reserves. She remarked:
"If true, this is a total strategic blunder and sets the United States back years in the bitcoin race."
However, the on-chain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence refuted such reports on July 23, saying the U.S. government didn't sell 170,000 BTC worth $20 billion.
It is only the Marshals Service that has reported holding 28,988 BTC, but there are other U.S. government departments too, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Justice (DoJ), etc., that seize and hold BTC, Arkham said.
In fact, different U.S. government departments currently hold at least 198,000 BTC worth $23.5 billion, which hasn't moved at all for 4 months, the analyst added.
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However, the journalist who obtained the Freedom of Information Act response, aka @L0laL33tz, cautioned against blindly believing on-chain wallet trackers like Arkham, which they said fail to distinguish between seized and forfeited Bitcoin.
Here is the difference between the two.
While forfeited assets are officially owned by the U.S. government, seized assets can either go into compensating victims of hacks, scams, etc. or into the government coffers, @L0laL33tz underlined .
On-chain platforms like Arkham list both forfeited and seized BTC, they added.
Cynthia Lummis receives scathing pushback over federal coffers first appeared on TheStreet on Jul 23, 2025
This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jul 23, 2025, where it first appeared.
