By Frank Corva from BitcoinMagazine
It appears the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) sold bitcoin worth $6.3 million that developers of the Samourai Wallet, Kevin Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, paid to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) as fees as part of their guilty plea agreements.
Thus, they have violated Executive Order 14233 issued by President Trump, which mandates that bitcoin acquired through civil or criminal asset forfeiture procedures must be held as part of America's Bitcoin strategic reserve.
If New York's Southern District (SDNY), the federal judicial district where the Samurai case was scheduled to be tried, has already violated Executive Order 14233, this would not be the first time that SDNY officials have acted in defiance of federal government directives.
What happened to the Bitcoin?
According to a document titled "Asset Liquidation Agreement," which we obtained exclusively and has not yet been published, the Bitcoin relinquished by Rodriguez and Hill will be sold—or has already been sold.
According to the document, the defendants agreed to transfer $6,367,139.69 worth of Bitcoin—57.55353033 BTC at the time the last party signed the agreement, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Cecilia Vogelone on November 3, 2025—to the U.S. Marshals Service.
It appears that the Bitcoin sent from the address bc1q4pntkz06z7xxvdcers09cyjqz5gf8ut4pua22r on November 3, 2025, has bypassed any direct enforcement actions by the U.S. Marshals Service. Instead, it seems to have been sent directly to the Coinbase Prime address 3Lz5ULL7nG7vv6nwc8kNnbjDmSnawKS3n8 (Arkham Intel attributes this address to a brokerage firm), most likely for sale.
This Coinbase Prime address currently holds a zero balance, indicating that the Bitcoin may have already been sold.
If the U.S. Marshals Service sold the Bitcoin, it did so at its own discretion, not as a legal obligation, suggesting that some members of the Department of Justice may still view Bitcoin as a prohibited asset to be eliminated rather than a strategic asset, as directed by President Trump for government agencies to retain.
Given that the Samurai trial arose under the previous administration, which had a notoriously poor reputation for its hostility toward non-custodial crypto tools and their developers, the decision to ignore Executive Order 14233 and sell Bitcoin despite an executive directive aligns with a pattern of treating Bitcoin as something that must be removed from government budgets as quickly as possible.$BTC
