Following the United States’ capture of Nicolás Maduro over the weekend, a report came out claiming that Venezuela had $60 billion stored in Bitcoin—leading to speculation that the U.S. could lay claim to cryptocurrency as well as oil. Despite numerous reports of the huge Venezuelan Bitcoin stash, however, a crypto forensic firm is skeptical of the claims.
The news of Venezuela’s Bitcoin holding began to bubble up last Saturday, the same day that Maduro was ousted. The digital publication Project Brazen reported that his regime could control $60 billion in the original cryptocurrency—but offered little in the way of proof.
“The article does not mention any addresses as a starting point, making it difficult to verify any of these speculated claims,” said Aurelie Barthere, principal research analyst at Nansen, about Project Brazen’s report.
Barthere is not the first person to express skepticism about the country’s purported crypto treasure trove. Mauricio di Bartolomeo, the Venezuelan co-founder of the financial services company Ledn, told Fortune on Wednesday that the level of the country’s corruption makes the figure hard to believe. He expanded his argument in an opinion piece he wrote for Coindesk.
Estimates of Venezuela’s crypto holdings vary wildly. Bitcointreasuries.net estimates that the country has $22 million worth of Bitcoin. That figure would make Venezuela the government entity with the ninth-most money tied up in the original cryptocurrency, just behind North Korea.
While the exact size of Venezuela’s Bitcoin wealth is unclear, the country has long been a player in crypto. Maduro introduced a token called the Petro in 2018, which was shuttered six years later. Its citizens have also turned to stablecoins as a way to fight their currency’s hyperinflation.
Trump has said that he will “run” Venezuela, and some have speculated that includes seizing the country’s Bitcoin holdings. Andrew Fierman, head of national security intelligence at Chainalysis, said he could not speak to the likelihood of such a seizure. He did, however, explain what gaining control of assets might look like.
A freezing of assets could occur through centralized services, he says. These services would get a court order for an exchange or an issuer like Tether or Circle who could blacklist an address. The second method is through physical seizure. The U.S. could get control of wallets, devices, and keys through compelled cooperation.
For now, there is unlikely to be a full and accurate account of Venezuela’s Bitcoin holdings until the political situation in the country becomes more stable.
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