The US seize of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has renewed questions over whether or not Venezuela holds an undisclosed Bitcoin reserve, which analysts say stays unproven.
On Saturday, investigative journalist Bradley Hope outlined a concept that Venezuela could also be holding a hidden Bitcoin (BTC) reserve value as much as $60 billion, claiming that its authorities has been changing gold into cryptocurrency over a number of years.
“Sources describe a Swiss lawyer who controls pockets entry,” Hope mentioned in a co-authored report revealed by the investigative publication Whale Looking, elevating questions in regards to the alleged involvement of Alex Saab, Venezuela’s minister of trade and nationwide manufacturing, who has been sanctioned by the US.
Though Hope’s concept was rapidly picked up by the media, main blockchain intelligence platforms have but to search out proof of Venezuela’s undeclared Bitcoin holdings.
The place does the 600,000 BTC determine come from?
Hypothesis that Venezuela could maintain as much as 600,000 BTC has drawn consideration, notably as trackers like BitcoinTreasuries.web counsel that the nation has collected simply 240 BTC (about $22.2 million) since 2022.
The 600,000 BTC determine just isn’t primarily based on onchain proof. Reasonably, it’s a mathematical estimate derived from Venezuela’s gold gross sales since 2018, together with a 73-ton sale that 12 months, which accounted for about 40% of the nation’s gold reserves.
“If they really possessed 600,000 Bitcoin, then they managed to idiot a number of blockchain analysts,” Whale Alert co-founder Frank Weert advised Cointelegraph, including: “They should include some severe proof for such a declare.”
Weert additionally expressed warning in regards to the 240 BTC reported by BitcoinTreasuries, noting that its knowledge just isn’t all the time backed by verifiable transactions.
Venezuela adopted crypto early, however holdings stay opaque
“Whereas we’re nonetheless trying into potential Maduro regime crypto holdings, it’s necessary to notice that the Maduro regime has been experimenting with cryptocurrencies for years — the truth is, lengthy earlier than most different governments,” mentioned Ari Redbord, world head of coverage at blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs.
Below Maduro, Venezuela launched its oil-backed nationwide digital foreign money, the Petro, in 2018, a challenge that was shut down after six years.
“The federal government directed state entities to undertake crypto-based fee mechanisms, notably for oil-related and cross-border transactions,” Redbord famous, including that Venezuela has routed oil gross sales by way of digital wallets reasonably than conventional banks.
Venezuela has additionally emerged as a significant adopter of crypto amid spiraling inflation of its native foreign money, the bolívar; the nation ranks eleventh among the many prime 20 for crypto adoption in 2025, in response to a report by TRM Labs.
Regardless of early adoption and rising reputation, Venezuela’s crypto holdings, together with a possible Bitcoin reserve, stay opaque. Platforms like Arkham don’t monitor Venezuelan government-linked wallets. Chainalysis and Elliptic declined to remark.
Aurelie Barthere, head of analysis at blockchain analytics platform Nansen, advised Cointelegraph there are some Venezuela-linked pockets clusters, together with state-aligned exchanges like Criptolago.
Nevertheless, attribution stays tough because of the usage of “fragmented unhosted wallets and specialised offshore over-the-counter brokers to masks the final word vacation spot of funds,” Barthere mentioned.
“For giant-scale asset conversion, one seems for ‘peeling chains’ the place huge sums are fractionated into smaller, much less suspicious transactions throughout lengthy sequences of addresses,” the analyst mentioned.
Barthere additionally talked about a number of obfuscation strategies together with coin mixers like Twister Money, cross-chain swaps, and state-controlled mining for producing clear cash.
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“Whereas superior behavioral analytics and clustering heuristics can typically reconstruct these trails, they continue to be extremely efficient at sustaining believable deniability except the underlying non-public keys are compromised,” she mentioned.
Cointelegraph approached Whale Looking’s Bradley Hope for remark relating to Venezuela’s alleged Bitcoin reserve and the US Division of Justice a couple of potential crypto seizure effort, however had not acquired any responses by publication.
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