The U.S. Justice Department last October announced the largest asset seizure in American history: a cache of bitcoin then valued at $15 billion tied to the Cambodia-based Prince Group that prosecutors alleged oversaw an empire of human trafficking and industrial-scale scamming.
The news offered a rare glimmer of hope for victims of sophisticated cryptocurrency scams. In part due to the ease of laundering cryptocurrencies, these victims have had a notoriously difficult time recovering their lost life savings or even getting law enforcement to begin tracing such funds.
“By dismantling a criminal empire built on forced labor and deception, we are sending a clear message that the United States will use every tool at its disposal to defend victims, recover stolen assets, and bring to justice those who exploit the vulnerable for profit,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a joint statement.
But in the five months since the announcement, questions and frustrations have begun to swirl around the Justice Department’s handling of the historic cache of seized funds. The Justice Department has given little indication of what it plans to do with the 127,271 seized bitcoins, currently worth around $9 billion, as it has swiftly rejected claims on the funds made by attorneys representing hundreds of alleged victims.
Daniel Thornburgh and other attorneys representing hundreds of alleged victims of crypto scams say the government is not providing a viable path for returning seized funds to rightful owners.
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Victims’ advocates and attorneys fear the agency may use the funds to capitalize President Trump’s national Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, a government crypto stockpile advocated by the cryptocurrency industry.
“This would lead to victims being revictimized by their own government,” said Thornburgh.
He is part of a growing number of attorneys and victim advocates who are calling for a special victim fund to take over responsibility for the historic sum of seized assets. They argue that this alternative offers a clearer path to victims receiving restitution.
The Department of Justice declined to comment on the case.
In November, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 36 partner publications released The Coin Laundry investigation that showed how cryptocurrency scam victims face immense difficulty recovering funds due to the rapidly expanding illicit crypto economy. In interviews, dozens of victims told ICIJ and its media partners that they faced financial ruin as criminals rapidly laundered their stolen funds through secretive crypto wallets. In many cases, reports to law enforcement yielded no response at all.
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The U.S. seizure of billions in bitcoin from the Prince Group’s founder Chen Zhi stemmed from allegations that he operated a transnational criminal organization that used forced labor in scam compounds to defraud victims worldwide. After the group was hit with U.S. and U.K. sanctions, Chen was taken into custody in Cambodia and sent to China in January 2026.
Even as victim attorneys strategize how to get their clients’ money back, fundamental questions hang over the case, including how and when U.S. authorities obtained the funds in the first place. Attorneys say that more information could help victims make stronger claims on the assets, while the Prince Group argues the lack of detail points to a flimsy case for the government holding the crypto at all. Although the Justice Department declined to comment on how it obtained the Bitcoin, the Chinese government recently accused the U.S. of stealing it through sophisticated hacking.
The government’s indictment of Chen contains apparent irregularities that are especially striking given the case’s significance. Prosecutors’ evidence against Chen relied in part on photographs alleged to illustrate the Prince Group’s violent methods.
ICIJ confirmed that one disturbing photo included in the indictment showing a man bound to an overturned chair appears to have nothing to do with the Prince Group. The exact photo was part of a light-hearted post published on a Mongolian-language website in April of 2020, describing an unusual medical incident. In another case, a man portrayed in the indictment as a victim of the Prince Group told ICIJ in an interview he had never been the victim of organized crime.
Victim claims have been swiftly rejected
When government authorities seize assets, they can keep those assets for public sector use, distribute the assets to victims who lost money to the crime in question, or do a combination of both. The process of determining if and how assets should be returned to victims is complicated and can take years.
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In the wake of the Prince Group seizure, one U.S. senator said the assets could be used in part to strengthen Donald Trump’s national strategic bitcoin reserve, a U.S. government stockpile of cryptocurrency that industry proponents say will help boost the prominence of bitcoin. At the same time an array of alleged scam victims and their lawyers flooded the Justice Department with claims on the seized assets.
The department rapidly rejected many of them, asserting a wide variety of reasons why the victims had no legitimate claims, including that victims had not put forth specific evidence linking their cases to the seized funds and that they had no legal basis to credibly claim the funds in the first place.
Victims and their attorneys told ICIJ that a troubling picture is emerging of a Justice Department that appears set on rejecting claims.
Without more information about the seizure, scam victims are at a disadvantage because the alleged laundering was highly complex, making it difficult to directly link any specific scam to the cache of digital currency, according to lawyers.
“What’s happening here is not normal at all,” said Marc Fitapelli, a New York-based attorney who represents victims of cryptocurrency scams. “There should be an independent person appointed by the court to have control over these assets.”
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The Phnom Penh headquarters of Prince Holding Group in Cambodia, with the Prince Group logo missing from the building’s facade. Image: Patrick Chengzhi Wang/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Thornburgh told ICIJ that recent conversations with Justice Department lawyers convinced him that the government was committed to denying victim claims, so he booked a trip to Cambodia on a long-shot mission to collect additional evidence linking his cases to the Prince Group. Thornburg said he spent a grueling week in early March interviewing dozens of former workers at the country’s notorious scam compounds, but had little luck finding the documentation to connect his client’s cases to the DOJ’s seized funds.
“It was an incredible amount of work to demonstrate what I probably already knew, which was: this was going to be impossible,” Thornburgh said. “Even if I was successful, victims or their lawyers should not have to travel all the way across the world to recover their assets.”
Thornburgh expressed concern about the Justice Department’s tactics in a separate high-profile crypto forfeiture action announced in June. Last month, government attorneys argued that victims did not deserve to recover funds from this seizure because the victims had freely given it away to scammers. “Although their voluntary transfers may have been induced through misrepresentations, those transfers were made voluntarily nonetheless,” the Justice Department said in a filing.
Several experts pointed to legislation as the most promising path to recovering victim funds. Erin West, the founder of Operation Shamrock, an advocacy group for victims of cyber scams, told ICIJ the organization would be working with partners to push for legislation that allocates the seized funds to victims. “We have an amazing opportunity to put found assets back into the hands of those who deserve it most,” West said.
Fitapelli said that a call with Justice Department lawyers last month yielded little in direct answers. “I was told that victims will be contacted by the government if/when the DOJ determines it is appropriate,” he said. “So victims should hope that some lawyer at the Justice department stumbles on their file and contacts them? This is so unfair.”
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Deeper questions about the money
Scam victims aren’t the only ones seeking more information from the Justice Department about the case.
Almost immediately after the government’s announcement of the historic seizure, cryptocurrency experts began to ask basic questions about the origin of the enormous pile of bitcoin. According to the U.S. officials, the Prince Group’s alleged laundering methods diverted proceeds of fraud to fund a bitcoin mining company called LuBian that created new, “clean” bitcoins. Attorneys representing thousands of alleged victims of Iranian terrorism say that this bitcoin mining operation had extensive ties to Iran and are also making claims on the seized bitcoin.
But there is a twist in the history of these coins: On the blockchain, the publicly available ledger of most cryptocurrency transactions, experts could see that the huge sum of seized bitcoin, which was reportedly stolen by an unknown hacker in 2020 and then sat dormant in crypto wallets of unknown ownership for years. This crypto remained untouched between late 2020 and mid-2024, when the cache of bitcoin moved to a new set of wallets where it has remained since, crypto analyst Yury Serov told ICIJ.
A blockchain is a digital ledger that stores information across a worldwide computer network. Cryptocurrency transaction data is stored in files known as “blocks,” which are saved chronologically to create a digital “chain.”
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Each block has a unique identifier, or hash, which is generated by a cryptographic algorithm that also includes data from the previous blocks in the chain. Blockchains are distributed, which means copies are saved across multiple computers and must match across the network to be valid, rather than relying on a centralized third party, like a bank.
Blockchain technology is not exclusive to cryptocurrency. It can also be used to store other kinds of data, such as medical information or property records.
The U.S. government filings that ICIJ reviewed do not provide details on how it came into possession of the bitcoin. This lack of an official explanation has created an opening for speculation among experts, interested parties and a rival superpower. A Chinese cybercrimes agency recently suggested that the U.S. government originally stole the bitcoin through sophisticated hacking in 2020.
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Last week, lawyers representing Chen demanded that the Justice Department explain how it seized the funds.
The Justice Department’s asset forfeiture filing, which describes the government’s rationale for taking the $15 billion, has also created some confusion about which victims may be entitled to the funds.
After the government announced its seizure in 2025, analysts quickly pointed out that the $15 billion in bitcoin had sat dormant in crypto wallets for years after their reported theft in 2020. Chen’s defense attorneys have argued these dormant assets have had no opportunity to commingle with any money taken from scam victims after 2020. But, in its asset forfeiture filing, some of the government’s most specific descriptions of the Prince Group’s alleged scams involve frauds that took place in 2021 and 2022 — after the seized bitcoin went dormant.
Attorneys for Chen last week criticized the asset forfeiture complaint’s use of these alleged crimes to justify seizing money that had been out of circulation since 2020.
The Prince Group argues that the U.S. government somehow took the coins and then created a story to justify keeping them. “This indictment is simply air cover for a giant cash grab — one that both does a disservice to the victims of these crypto scams and injustice to an innocent man,” a spokesperson for the Prince Group told ICIJ in a statement.
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“Prosecutors used exaggerations, deceit, and outright impossibilities to convince a court to retroactively approve their theft of Bitcoin and to convince a grand jury of everyday Americans to indict an innocent man, Chen Zhi,” the spokesperson said. “Not only did prosecutors use salacious rumors and innuendo to make wild accusations completely unconnected to Chen, they made serious errors, generated falsehoods out of whole cloth, and acted with egregious negligence all in an effort to justify their desperate, unfounded allegations.”
In court filings last week, Prince Group lawyers highlighted another possibly problematic part of U.S. authorities’ case against Chen. Several photos that the indictment claimed as evidence of wrongdoing appear to have no ostensible relationship to the Prince Group or its alleged crimes.
One of these photos, offered up by U.S. prosecutors as an example of the Prince Group’s violence, shows a man bound to an overturned plastic lawnchair. But ICIJ was able to confirm that the same photo was featured on a Mongolian-language website six years ago in a post about a man whose testicles became stuck in a lawn chair and had to be extricated from the chair by medical workers. This article contains no mention of the Prince Group or any wrongdoing.
Left, a photo included in the U.S. indictment against Chen Zhi shows a man attached to a lawn chair in a hospital bed; Right, the same image was published in an unrelated article on a Mongolian-language website in 2020.
Another photo in the indictment shows a purported victim of the Prince Group with blood flowing from a head wound. However, on a Zoom call arranged by representatives for the Prince Group, the man, who requested anonymity, told ICIJ that the photo depicted injuries he sustained in a drunken fight in 2015, and that he has never been the victim of violence by an organized crime group.
Hany Farid, a visual forensics expert at the University of California at Berkeley, confirmed that the man ICIJ spoke with via Zoom is the same person pictured in the indictment.
The Department of Justice declined to comment on the photographs.
By now, cryptocurrency investors should be familiar with the cyclical nature of the industry and its repeating pattern of booms and busts. With prices down by an eye-popping 43% over the last 12 months, XRP (XRP 0.71%) is on a downtrend that has erased much of the gains it enjoyed during Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign in late 2024.
That said, long-term ownership is the key to sustainable returns in financial markets because it helps investors ignore the short-term volatility and gives time for an asset’s fundamentals to shine through. Let’s discuss what the next 10 years might have in store for XRP as it attempts to regain the market’s attention and break into mainstream finance.
Today’s Change
(-0.71%) $-0.01
Current Price
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$1.34
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$82B
Day’s Range
$1.32 – $1.35
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52wk Range
$1.14 – $3.65
Volume
2.1B
Rethinking the cryptocurrency market
Unlike stocks or bonds, cryptocurrencies are not tied to profit-generating real-world businesses, which makes them impossible to value based on traditional metrics like earnings. And while it is hard to pin down the exact factors that move the digital currency market, they don’t seem to perform as reliable safe-haven assets, contrary to earlier assumptions.
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Safe havens are expected to maintain or increase in value during times of economic and geopolitical turmoil — such as Trump’s erratic trade policy and the war in Iran. But the cryptocurrency market hasn’t performed particularly well since the crisis started (much like stocks). And over the long term,investors should probably focus on the factors that drive risk asset prices, such as interest rates and institutional adoption.
Lower rates make borrowing easier, which increases the amount of cash in the economy and makes people more willing to take risks — benefiting the crypto demand. Meanwhile, attracting institutional adoption will be XRP’s key to standing out from the thousands of other options.
XRP’s push into mainstream finance
XRP is unique because of the visibility of its development team, Ripple Labs. While other major cryptocurrency developers tend to keep a lower profile (Bitcoin‘s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, is famously anonymous), Ripple Labs is seemingly glad to make headlines.
Recently, these included winning a partial victory in an SEC lawsuit that sought to regulate its previous token sales under securities law. The settlement resulted in a $50 million fine, but Ripple’s token sales to retail investors weren’t classified as securities sales. Ripple is also working hard to break into mainstream finance. And in December, it earned preliminary conditional approval to create Ripple National Trust Bank, which will allow it to operate as a federally regulated financial institution in the U.S.
Image source: Getty Images.
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There are several benefits to this strategy. For starters, it gives Ripple Labs (and its associated tokens like XRP) a higher level of trust and legitimacy, which is crucial in an industry known for controversy. Furthermore, it makes it easier for the developer to support and develop additional assets like the stablecoin Ripple USD.
While Ripple USD is a separate asset from XRP, they share the same blockchain ledger. Furthermore, Ripple USD transaction fees are paid in XRP, boosting network activity and potentially reducing the XRP supply because a small percentage of all transactions made on the network are removed from circulation through a process called burning.
Where will XRP be in 10 years?
XRP’s developers will have immense influence over the trajectory of the asset over the next 10 years and beyond. And so far, their influence looks like a good thing after a series of regulatory wins that can help increase demand for the asset and boost its legitimacy. Positive macroeconomic trends like falling Federal Reserve interest rates could also eventually help the cryptocurrency industry as a whole.
The recent dip in XRP prices looks like a long-term buying opportunity. That said, the market is clearly in a downtrend. And no one wants to accidentally catch a falling knife, so it might make sense to wait for some signs that sentiment is improving before considering a position.
The NFA filing lists Kinetic Markets as both an FCM and swap firm. Bloomberg was the first to report on the NFA filing. Kalshi Inc. holds a 10% or greater financial interest in the entity. Co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara are named as indirect owners, with Lior Samuel Hirschfeld serving as CEO of Kinetic, Sam Rosner as CFO, and Joshua Andrew Beardsley as chief compliance officer.
Until now, Kalshi operated on a fully collateralized model, requiring traders to post 100% of a contract’s value before entering a position. Margin trading changes that. Participants will be able to hold positions by posting only a fraction of the total value as collateral, freeing up capital for other use.
Mansour told attendees at a recent Kalshi Research conference that margin access will open to institutional investors first, hedge funds, prop desks, and similar firms, before any retail rollout is considered. No firm launch date has been announced.
The FCM approval connects directly to Kalshi’s existing status as a CFTC-designated contract market for event contracts, one of the first exchanges to hold that designation. The company filed for FCM registration in late 2025, and the NFA confirmed the approval this week.
Kalshi’s push into institutional access has been building for months. In early February 2026, the company was reported to be seeking CFTC approval specifically to attract capital from professional trading operations. The FCM registration gives those firms the leverage framework they need to participate at scale.
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The report notes that recent partnership announcements reflect the same direction. Kalshi signed a clearing and infrastructure deal with Fidelity Information Services, announced a data integration with Ark Invest on March 26, 2026, and completed an earlier integration with Tradeweb in 2026.
Monthly trading volumes on the platform have exceeded $10 billion in recent periods. The company’s valuation stands at roughly $22 billion. Kalshi currently offers contracts on politics, sports, crypto prices, weather outcomes, and other real-world events.
Founded in 2020, Kalshi spent years in regulatory proceedings before the CFTC approved it as the first dedicated event contract exchange. The platform has also faced state-level legal challenges in Tennessee and Nevada over sports betting jurisdiction, but federal courts have sided with CFTC oversight of the contracts.
Onlookers on social media described the FCM registration as a “major hurdle” for Kalshi. Alongside this, it will benefit institutional participants who want short exposure to event-driven outcomes, positions that were difficult to construct efficiently under the old collateral structure.
“Solving for the Ouroborus of Margin & Jump Risk is how you get adoption by players who have to deploy at a large notiona amount,” one person wrote on X.
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How quickly institutional adoption follows will depend on how Kalshi structures margin requirements and which contracts it makes eligible. The company has indicated the feature may not apply to all event contracts at launch.
Kinetic Markets is currently listed as an inactive NFA member, meaning it is not independently conducting commodity interest business. Its primary function is to support Kalshi’s expanded trading infrastructure. Further details on the rollout timeline are expected in the coming weeks.
FAQ 🔎
What is Kinetic Markets LLC? Kinetic Markets LLC is a Kalshi affiliate registered by the NFA as a futures commission merchant on March 24, 2026, to enable margin trading on the platform.
How does margin trading work on Kalshi? Instead of posting 100% of a contract’s value, margin traders post a fraction of the position as collateral, improving capital efficiency.
Who can access Kalshi margin trading first? Margin trading will initially be available to institutional investors such as hedge funds, with retail access potentially following at a later date.
Is Kalshi regulated by the CFTC? Yes, Kalshi operates as a CFTC-designated contract market, one of the first exchanges approved specifically for event contracts.
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Nonprofits can either convert crypto donations to cash immediately or hold them as an investment.
Cryptocurrency is treated as a property donation by the IRS, not as a currency donation.
Experts advise nonprofits to seek professional financial guidance before accepting and managing cryptocurrency.
Nonprofits and cryptocurrency donations are increasingly being used to put old-fashioned money in the bank.
Cryptocurrency valuations over time are such that more nonprofits are opening up to accepting crypto and converting it to cash, or holding on to it for hoped-for long-term value increases.
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Principal factors that have held back nonprofits’ acceptance of crypto donations are uncertainty about how it works, valuation volatility, tax implications and regulatory considerations. But the strains on traditional fundraising and the potential gain nonprofits can realize from crypto are driving them to explore — or accept — this nontraditional funding source. Other issues are not having a vehicle in place to accept crypto, and many nonprofits as regards crypto haven’t updated their internal investment policies and donation acceptance policies.
Crypto’s name is based on combining cryptography (encrypted codes) with currency. There is no government central bank or other authority creating crypto. An internet artificial intelligence overview explains crypto creation as follows, and don’t be surprised if it seems almost a foreign language: “Cryptocurrency is created through decentralized digital processes, primarily mining or validation, rather than being minted by a central bank. New coins are generated as rewards for securing the blockchain network, verifying transactions, and solving complex mathematical problems, using specialized computer hardware.”
Crypto valuation has something in common with the plush toys called Beanie Babies. Beginning in 1993, Beanie Babies were a craze for a short time. As the idea of a collectible toy spread, demand grew; scarcity and restrained production drove costs higher. Long lines formed at stores so the newest ones could be grabbed as they went on shelves. Today, many Beanie Babies can be bought on eBay for $5.99, though some rare, mint-condition Babies sell for thousands. Why the high and the low? That’s what people are willing to pay.
Basically, crypto has value because it’s believed and accepted to have value. Key valuation factors include supply and demand and crypto’s controlled, decentralized nature outside the traditional fiat currency structure. There are many forms of crypto; Bitcoin, the largest crypto variation, has seen spectacular gains in value as well as encountering substantial valuation declines.
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Bitcoin debuted in 2009 with essentially no value. On Oct. 6, 2025, Bitcoin reached its high-water mark of $126,198.07. At 2 p.m. on March 11, Bitcoin was at $70,268.35. Bankrate.com explains Bitcoin’s value driver: “The price of Bitcoin is notoriously driven by sentiment. When the market shifts to its ‘greed’ phase, Bitcoin soars amid the utopian promises and speculators dismiss the risks of an asset that generates no cash flow. In the ‘fear’ phase, Bitcoin’s price seems to find no traction, as sellers push its price lower amid bad news or general market malaise.” In short, Bitcoin, or any crypto, is worth what the buyer will pay.
The IRS treats crypto as a digital asset, along with stablecoin (stable because it’s tied to stable assets like gold or the U.S. dollar) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs, one-of-a-kind cryptographic tokens on a blockchain, that can’t be replicated.) Nonprofits receiving crypto donations must treat them for tax purposes as property donations rather than currency donations. The IRS’s “Frequently asked questions on virtual currency transactions” page lists IRS notices and links to pages dealing with crypto’s tax implications.
A nonprofit with crypto donations can’t go down to the bank and hand them to a teller to cash in the donations. Financial institutions use third-party processors, just as a nonprofit would use an exchange or processor to make the conversion. The National Council of Nonprofits provides a detailed look at crypto donations and conversion in “What Your Nonprofit Needs to Know About Cryptocurrency Donations.”
Nonprofits can seek to convert their crypto donations to cash as soon as the donation is in hand. If Bitcoin, the amount, even if well off the high, will still likely be substantial. Other types, not so much. The question confronting every nonprofit looking at a crypto donation is whether to sell or buy and hold? The decision depends substantially on the organization’s immediate needs — and if they’re willing to bet the value will increase — because that’s what it is, a bet.
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Nonprofits are best advised to seek the advice of accounting or finance professionals fluent and experienced in cryptocurrency language and disposition strategies, and who walk nonprofit leaders through the substance of crypto merits and demerits. The outcome will give a stronger basis for decisions on if, when and how much money from a crypto donation will actually go into the bank.
Samuel French is president of the accounting and business consulting firm Rodefer Moss & Co. PLLC, headquartered in Knoxville. The company’s website is rodefermoss.com.
