US Bitcoin Reserve Could Lose 94,643 BTC to Bitfinex Claim

A federal court is deciding whether to return 94,643 BTC recovered from the 2016 Bitfinex hack back to the exchange as restitution. That amount represents 30% of the US government's total 328,372 BTC holdings, which Trump designated as the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve last year.

The stolen Bitcoin was recovered in February 2022 after US authorities traced 119,754 BTC taken in the August 2016 theft. Prosecutors asked the court in January 2025 to approve returning the recovered assets to Bitfinex as in-kind restitution, setting up a direct conflict with Trump's promise that the government would not sell reserve coins.

Trump's executive order includes a carve-out for this exact scenario. The order explicitly allows dispositions pursuant to a court order and singles out a specific exception for assets that should be returned to identifiable, verifiable victims of crime. That language gives the court a clear path to order the transfer without violating the reserve mandate.

Bitfinex announced plans for the recovered coins, saying it intends to use 80% of the net funds to repurchase and burn its LEO token within 18 months, which could include over-the-counter transactions like direct BTC-for-LEO swaps. K33 Research Head Vetle Lunde calculated that 80% allocation would equal about 75,000 BTC worth ₱288.72 billion ($5 billion) at current prices.

Lunde modeled LEO with two primary value drivers and found that trade-revenue buybacks alone have a fair value of just ₱7.22 billion ($125 million). That's a fraction of LEO's ₱461.95 billion ($8 billion) market cap tracked by CoinMarketCap, suggesting the token is pricing in the full Bitfinex restitution windfall.

If the court orders the return, the US reserve would drop to 234,000 BTC. Senator Cynthia Lummis reintroduced the BITCOIN Act in March 2025 with five co-sponsors, proposing the government acquire 1 million BTC over five years with a 20-year minimum holding period.