The United States Department of Justice has come under fire after crypto media houses reported that the agency sold roughly 57.55 Bitcoin seized from the Samourai Wallet co-founders, in what is being flagged as a direct violation of an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump.
The incident became a talking point within crypto circles after a report from Bitcoin Magazine alleged that the DOJ, through the US Marshals Service, had quietly liquidated roughly $6.3 million worth of Bitcoin on Nov. 3, 2025.
According to on-chain data cited in the report, the BTC in question was transferred from a bech32 address associated with the Samourai Wallet founders, Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, to a wallet belonging to Coinbase Prime.
The Bitcoin was forfeited as part of the developers’ plea deal with the government.
After the first transfer to the Coinbase Prime wallet address 3Lz5U, the funds were subsequently sent to another wallet within the same brokerage cluster, identified as 1AaFQ.
The report argued that, taken together, the transfer represents a sale of approximately $6.3 million (based on prices at the time) and stands in direct violation of Executive Order (EO) 14233 that came into effect earlier this year.
The March executive order
Trump signed the executive order in March 2025 as a part of the United States’ plans to hoard Bitcoin seized from criminal and civil forfeitures within a national Bitcoin reserve.
Per the order, any seized BTC would be used to fund the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and explicitly prohibits the sale of any assets held within the reserve.
US Senator Cynthia Lummis, a prominent Bitcoin advocate and co-sponsor of the BITCOIN Act proposing a strategic Bitcoin reserve, has also spoken up about the matter and publicly condemned the move, even though no official announcements regarding such a sale have been made.
“We can’t afford to squander these strategic assets while other nations are accumulating bitcoin. I’m deeply concerned about this report,” Lummis wrote in a Jan. 6 X post.
Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, has also taken note of the incident and confirmed that the Trump administration is looking into the transfer.
On-chain data tells a different story
Based on blockchain data alone, it may be premature to conclude that the funds were liquidated, as Coinbase Prime is known to internally sweep addresses as a part of standard operational behavior.
The original report stated that the Coinbase Prime address showed zero balance after the transfer was made, which doesn’t automatically imply that a sale took place.
While many argue that transfers to prime brokerage addresses are typically done to liquidate assets, it doesn’t definitively prove they were sold for dollars yet.
Some are even speculating that the DOJ might argue they are simply using Coinbase for custody.
However, the mention of an “asset liquidation agreement” in internal documents has sparked further suspicion.
As it is a government-controlled wallet transfer, to confirm any sale would require official court filings, custodian records, or public statements from the agency.
During past large-scale seizures, such as the Silk Road BTC, the government has announced upcoming auctions, allowing the market to prepare for a bulk sale.
If true, the quiet handling of this transaction would mark a departure from previous protocols and may prompt increased scrutiny from lawmakers and the crypto industry alike.
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