The reported US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has reignited speculation over whether Venezuela is holding an undisclosed Bitcoin reserve — a claim analysts say remains unsubstantiated.
Over the weekend, investigative journalist Bradley Hope outlined a theory suggesting Venezuela may have amassed a hidden Bitcoin reserve worth up to $60 billion by converting gold into cryptocurrency over several years. In a report published by investigative newsletter Whale Hunting, Hope claimed that “sources describe a Swiss lawyer who controls wallet access,” and raised questions about the alleged involvement of Alex Saab, Venezuela’s minister of industry and national production, who has been sanctioned by the US.
While the theory quickly gained traction across media outlets, major blockchain intelligence firms have so far found no onchain evidence to support the existence of a large, undisclosed Venezuelan Bitcoin reserve.
Where does the 600,000 BTC figure come from?
Speculation around a potential 600,000 BTC holding has drawn particular attention, especially given data from trackers such as BitcoinTreasuries.net, which show Venezuela holding just 240 BTC — worth roughly $22.2 million — accumulated since 2022.
The 600,000 BTC figure is not derived from blockchain data. Instead, it is a mathematical estimate based on Venezuela’s gold sales since 2018, including a 73-ton sale that year that represented about 40% of the country’s gold reserves.
“If they actually possessed 600,000 Bitcoin, they would have managed to fool a lot of blockchain analysts,” Whale Alert co-founder Frank Weert told Cointelegraph. “They need to come up with some serious proof to support such a claim.”
Weert also urged caution regarding the 240 BTC figure reported by BitcoinTreasuries, noting that the data is not always supported by verifiable onchain transactions.
Venezuela adopted crypto early, but holdings remain opaque
“While we are still investigating potential crypto holdings linked to the Maduro regime, it’s important to recognize that the government has been experimenting with cryptocurrencies for years — well before most other states,” said Ari Redbord, global head of policy at blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs.
Under President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela launched its oil-backed national digital currency, the Petro, in 2018, though the project was ultimately shut down after six years.
“The government directed state entities to adopt crypto-based payment mechanisms, particularly for oil-related and cross-border transactions,” Redbord said, adding that Venezuela has at times routed oil sales through digital wallets instead of traditional banking channels.
Venezuela has also become a major user of cryptocurrencies amid chronic inflation of the bolívar. The country ranked 11th among the top 20 nations for crypto adoption in 2025, according to a TRM Labs report.
Despite Venezuela’s early embrace of cryptocurrencies and their growing domestic use, the country’s crypto holdings — including any potential Bitcoin reserves — remain largely opaque. Blockchain intelligence platforms such as Arkham do not currently track wallets linked to the Venezuelan government, while Chainalysis and Elliptic declined to comment.
Aurelie Barthere, head of research at blockchain analytics firm Nansen, told Cointelegraph that some wallet clusters linked to Venezuela do exist, including those associated with state-aligned exchanges such as Criptolago.
However, she noted that reliably attributing funds remains challenging due to the use of “fragmented unhosted wallets and specialized offshore over-the-counter brokers, which help obscure the ultimate destination of funds.”
“For large-scale asset conversion, analysts typically look for so-called ‘peeling chains,’ where large sums are broken into smaller, less conspicuous transactions spread across long sequences of addresses,” Barthere said.
She added that a range of obfuscation techniques may also be employed, including the use of coin mixers such as Tornado Cash, cross-chain swaps, and state-controlled mining operations to generate newly minted coins.
“While advanced behavioral analytics and clustering heuristics can often reconstruct these transaction trails, such methods remain highly effective at preserving plausible deniability unless the underlying private keys are compromised,” she said.
Cointelegraph reached out to Whale Hunting’s Bradley Hope for comment on the alleged Venezuelan Bitcoin reserve, as well as to the US Department of Justice regarding any potential crypto seizure efforts, but had not received responses at the time of publication.
