According to 21.co, the US government holds 194,188 BTC (valued at about $5.3 billion) obtained as a result of forfeitures in high-profile lawsuits.
The company's analysts have reportedly based their conclusions on publicly available information, such as the Silk Road cases (69,369 BTC) in November 2020 and the hacking of crypto exchange Bitfinex (94,643 BTC) in January 2022.
It should be noted the US authorities store seized coins in hardware wallets operated by the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service.
The government is in no hurry to convert Bitcoins into fiat money. The legal process from seizure to final order of liquidation can take years. In some cases, this has benefited the government due to the rising price of the crypto.
Jarod Koopman, executive director of Forensic and Cyber Investigations at the IRS, has stated:
"We don’t play the market. We basically are set by the timing in our process."