Illya Gerasymchuk profile photo
Illya Gerasymchuk
Financial & Software Engineer

Multiple governments have seized Bitcoin

In fact, more Bitcoin has been seized than gold in the U.S. It's really not hard to google this, but here are some examples:

- Silk Road takedown (2013–2015) - ≈175K BTC
- "Individual X" Silk Road stash (2020) - ≈75K BTC
- Bitfinex-hack recovery (2022) - >94K BTC
- Movie2K piracy case - ≈50K BTC
- Finland Customs seizures - ≈2K BTC
- Netherlands money-laundering case - ≈2.5K BTC
- China PlusToken crackdown ≈200K BTC

Regarding gold - yes, it was seized in the past in the US, but it was at a much smaller scale than you imagine.

The publicly documented, conservative floor for government-seized BTC is ≈700K BTC (≈$77B today), which is already above the $58–110B value range for U.S. public gold coin surrendered in 1933–34.

If your argument is that Bitcoin is better than gold, because it's more private/seizure resistant - you are wrong.

If you think that by holding Bitcoin you're immune to U.S. government policies you're also wrong, as more than 90% of all Bitcoin buying volume comes from USD or USD derivatives (including stablecoins).

In fact, more Bitcoin has been seized than gold in the U.S. It's really not hard to google this, but here are some examples:
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