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The US seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has renewed questions implicit whether Venezuela holds an undisclosed Bitcoin reserve, which analysts accidental remains unproven.
On Saturday, investigative writer Bradley Hope outlined a mentation that Venezuela whitethorn beryllium holding a hidden Bitcoin (BTC) reserve worthy up to $60 billion, claiming that its authorities has been converting golden into cryptocurrency implicit respective years.
“Sources picture a Swiss lawyer who controls wallet access,” Hope said successful a co-authored report published by the investigative newsletter Whale Hunting, raising questions astir the alleged engagement of Alex Saab, Venezuela’s curate of manufacture and nationalist production, who has been sanctioned by the US.
Although Hope’s mentation was rapidly picked up by the media, large blockchain quality platforms person yet to find impervious of Venezuela’s undeclared Bitcoin holdings.
Where does the 600,000 BTC fig travel from?
Speculation that Venezuela whitethorn clasp up to 600,000 BTC has drawn attention, peculiarly arsenic trackers similar BitcoinTreasuries.net suggest that the state has accumulated conscionable 240 BTC (about $22.2 million) since 2022.
The 600,000 BTC fig is not based connected onchain evidence. Rather, it is simply a mathematical estimation derived from Venezuela’s golden income since 2018, including a 73-ton merchantability that year, which accounted for astir 40% of the country’s golden reserves.
“If they really possessed 600,000 Bitcoin, past they managed to fool a batch of blockchain analysts,” Whale Alert co-founder Frank Weert told Cointelegraph, adding: “They request to travel with immoderate superior impervious for specified a claim.”
Source: Bradley HopeWeert besides expressed caution astir the 240 BTC reported by BitcoinTreasuries, noting that its information is not ever backed by verifiable transactions.
Venezuela adopted crypto early, but holdings stay opaque
“While we are inactive looking into imaginable Maduro authorities crypto holdings, it’s important to enactment that the Maduro authorities has been experimenting with cryptocurrencies for years — successful fact, agelong earlier astir different governments,” said Ari Redbord, planetary caput of argumentation astatine blockchain quality institution TRM Labs.
Under Maduro, Venezuela launched its oil-backed nationalist integer currency, the Petro, successful 2018, a project that was unopen down aft six years.
“The authorities directed authorities entities to follow crypto-based outgo mechanisms, peculiarly for oil-related and cross-border transactions,” Redbord noted, adding that Venezuela has routed lipid income done integer wallets alternatively than accepted banks.
Venezuela has besides emerged arsenic a large adopter of crypto amid spiraling ostentation of its section currency, the bolívar; the state ranks 11th among the apical 20 for crypto adoption successful 2025, according to a study by TRM Labs.
Top 11 countries for crypto adoption successful 2025. Source: TRM LabsDespite aboriginal adoption and increasing popularity, Venezuela’s crypto holdings, including a imaginable Bitcoin reserve, stay opaque. Platforms similar Arkham bash not way Venezuelan government-linked wallets. Chainalysis and Elliptic declined to comment.
Aurelie Barthere, caput of probe astatine blockchain analytics level Nansen, told Cointelegraph determination are immoderate Venezuela-linked wallet clusters, including state-aligned exchanges similar Criptolago.
However, attribution remains hard owed to the usage of “fragmented unhosted wallets and specialized offshore over-the-counter brokers to disguise the eventual destination of funds,” Barthere said.
Source: Crypto Seth“For large-scale plus conversion, 1 looks for ‘peeling chains’ wherever monolithic sums are fractionated into smaller, little suspicious transactions crossed agelong sequences of addresses,” the expert said.
Barthere besides mentioned aggregate obfuscation methods including coin mixers similar Tornado Cash, cross-chain swaps, and state-controlled mining for generating cleanable coins.
Related: US entree to Venezuelan lipid could yet little Bitcoin mining costs, Bitfinex says
“While precocious behavioral analytics and clustering heuristics tin often reconstruct these trails, they stay highly effectual astatine maintaining plausible deniability unless the underlying backstage keys are compromised,” she said.
Cointelegraph approached Whale Hunting’s Bradley Hope for remark regarding Venezuela’s alleged Bitcoin reserve and the US Department of Justice astir a imaginable crypto seizure effort, but had not received immoderate responses by publication.
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