Members of the U.S. authorities have denied studies that bitcoin forfeited by Samourai Pockets builders was liquidated in violation of President Trump’s govt order mandating the retention of government-held bitcoin.
In a short assertion on X on January 16, Patrick Witt, Government Director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Belongings and Deputy Director on the Division of Conflict’s Workplace of Strategic Capital, stated the Division of Justice (DOJ) has confirmed that the forfeited digital property “haven’t been liquidated and won’t be liquidated” pursuant to Government Order 14233.
In response to Witt, the bitcoin will stay on the U.S. authorities’s steadiness sheet as a part of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR).
“We’ve acquired affirmation from DOJ that the digital property forfeited by Samourai Pockets haven’t been liquidated and won’t be liquidated,” Witt stated. “They’ll 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), performing underneath DOJ course, had bought 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 property had already been bought.
The Samourai BTC will keep within the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
If true, such a sale would have probably violated EO 14233, which explicitly states that bitcoin acquired by the U.S. authorities by legal or civil forfeiture “shall not be bought” 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 observe of liquidating seized bitcoin and to formally acknowledge bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset of the USA.
The Samourai Pockets case has been intently watched inside Bitcoin and crypto coverage circles, not solely due to the forfeiture concern but in addition on account of broader considerations about continued prosecutions of builders of noncustodial software program.
Samourai builders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill pleaded responsible and had been charged in 2025 to conspiracy to function an unlicensed cash transmitting enterprise, a cost critics argue is incompatible with the noncustodial nature of the software program.
These considerations have been heightened by what many view as inconsistencies between DOJ actions and steering issued underneath the Trump administration, together with Deputy Lawyer Basic Todd Blanche’s April 2025 memo calling for an finish to “regulation by prosecution” of noncustodial crypto instruments, in keeping 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 trade.
