On May 10, the Twitter community was abuzz with rumors that the U.S. government was selling a large quantity of Bitcoin. However, shortly after, on-chain information platform Arkham Intelligence revealed that they could not find any data indicating the movement of Bitcoin from the government’s wallet.
At noon on May 10, the price of Bitcoin began to show signs of an increase as the U.S. announced that the consumer price index (CPI) had come in lower than expected. Within minutes, Bitcoin surged past the $28,000 mark and remained at that level for several hours. However, at 3:00 PM on May 10, Bitcoin unexpectedly turned around and fell by over 5% in just one hour, dropping to $26,770.
At the same time, a Twitter account with over 3,500 followers, @1kbeetlejuice, claimed that the U.S. government was transferring Bitcoin. According to the tweet, around 9,800 BTC, worth $264 million, had been sold off by the government. The user based this information on data provided by Arkham.
Arkham promptly denied the rumor, stating that they “did not observe any activity [from the U.S. government].” They believed that the issue arose from community labeling. Arkham explained that users could manually add labels to a wallet address and modify the data set. They added that such manual changes were “not performed by Arkham,” and the platform only marked seven Bitcoin wallets associated with Silk Road.
Custom-labeling Entities on Arkham allows users to receive Alerts and transaction logs for addresses that Arkham may not have officially tagged as part of the entity.
These are the only Bitcoin wallets in our Silk Road Entity, we have not changed these today. pic.twitter.com/1eQNNONrsr
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) May 10, 2023
Silk Road was a black market website that criminals often used to purchase illegal items such as drugs, weapons, and pornography using Bitcoin. The website was shut down by the U.S. government in 2013, and billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin were confiscated.
Currently, the U.S. government holds approximately $1.9 billion worth of Bitcoin. Earlier this year, the U.S. government sold about 9,861 Bitcoin ($216 million) related to James Zhong, a fraudster on Silk Road. They plan to sell the remaining 41,490 coins in four batches by the end of 2023.
Arkham has confirmed that no Bitcoin transactions have been made from these wallets. Analyst @apes_prologue also reassured the community that there was no evidence to suggest that the U.S. was moving such a large amount of Bitcoin.
Additionally, according to Glassnode data, the amount of Bitcoin held by the U.S. has not changed in recent days. A similar rumor had also circulated on April 27.
As AZCoin News reported, Twitter account @tier10k had quoted data from Arkham, showing that the U.S. had dumped a large amount of Bitcoin, causing the price to plummet by more than 8% in just one hour. At that time, Arkham clarified that this was a misunderstanding caused by @tier10k labeling “US Gov” and “Mt Gox,” and was not a false warning created by Arkham.
Currently, it is unclear what caused the sudden drop in the price of Bitcoin on May 10. Some speculate that it was due to the announcement of Tesla’s suspension of Bitcoin payments, while others believe it was related to rumors of the U.S. government selling off Bitcoin. Despite these rumors, there is currently no evidence to suggest that the U.S. government has sold any Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency market continues to be volatile, with prices fluctuating frequently. Investors should remain vigilant and cautious when making investment decisions.
Read more:
- Bitcoin Surges Above $28k As US Inflation Comes In Lower Than Expected
- Strong Surge In BRC-20 Tokens Following Binance NFT’s Announcement Of Bitcoin Ordinals Support