Members of the U.S. authorities have denied reports that bitcoin forfeited by Samourai Pockets builders was liquidated in violation of President Trump’s government order mandating the retention of government-held bitcoin.
In a short statement on X on January 16, Patrick Witt, Government Director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Property and Deputy Director on the Division of Conflict’s Workplace of Strategic Capital, mentioned the Division of Justice (DOJ) has confirmed that the forfeited digital belongings “haven’t been liquidated and won’t be liquidated” pursuant to Government Order 14233.
In keeping with Witt, the bitcoin will stay on the U.S. authorities’s steadiness sheet as a part of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR).
“We now have obtained affirmation from DOJ that the digital belongings forfeited by Samourai Pockets haven’t been liquidated and won’t be liquidated,” Witt mentioned. “They are going to stay on the USG steadiness sheet as a part of the SBR.”
The clarification follows reporting by Bitcoin Journal earlier this month that raised questions on whether or not the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), appearing beneath DOJ path, had offered roughly 57.55 bitcoin — price roughly $6.3 million on the time — utilizing Coinbase Prime in November 2025.
That reporting cited an “Asset Liquidation Settlement” and on-chain information suggesting the forfeited bitcoin could have been transferred on to a Coinbase Prime deal with that later confirmed a zero steadiness, fueling hypothesis that the belongings had already been offered.
The Samourai BTC will keep within the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
If true, such a sale would have doubtlessly violated EO 14233, which explicitly states that bitcoin acquired by the U.S. authorities by legal or civil forfeiture “shall not be offered” and should as an alternative be retained as a part of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
The manager order was designed to reverse the long-standing apply of liquidating seized bitcoin and to formally acknowledge bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset of the US.
The Samourai Pockets case has been carefully watched inside Bitcoin and crypto coverage circles, not solely due to the forfeiture problem but additionally as a result of broader issues about continued prosecutions of builders of noncustodial software program.
Samourai builders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill pleaded responsible and were charged in 2025 to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed cash transmitting enterprise, a cost critics argue is incompatible with the noncustodial nature of the software program.
These issues have been heightened by what many view as inconsistencies between DOJ actions and steerage issued beneath the Trump administration, together with Deputy Legal professional Common Todd Blanche’s April 2025 memo calling for an finish to “regulation by prosecution” of noncustodial crypto instruments, in accordance with Bitcoin journalist Frank Corva.
If true, the administration’s affirmation that the Samourai bitcoin stays intact and earmarked for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve will seemingly be seen as a win for proponents of the bitcoin business.
