Venezuela’s ‘Shadow’ 600K Bitcoin Stash: Verifiable Or Not?

The US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has renewed questions over whether Venezuela holds an undisclosed Bitcoin reserve, which analysts say remains unproven.

On Saturday, investigative journalist Bradley Hope outlined a theory that Venezuela may be holding a hidden Bitcoin (BTC) reserve worth up to $60 billion, claiming that its government has been converting gold into cryptocurrency over several years.

“Sources describe a Swiss lawyer who controls wallet access,” Hope said in a co-authored report published by the investigative newsletter Whale Hunting, raising questions about the alleged involvement of Alex Saab, Venezuela’s minister of industry and national production, who has been sanctioned by the US.

Although Hope’s theory was quickly picked up by the media, major blockchain intelligence platforms have yet to find proof of Venezuela’s undeclared Bitcoin holdings.

Where does the 600,000 BTC figure come from?

Speculation that Venezuela may hold up to 600,000 BTC has drawn attention, particularly as trackers like BitcoinTreasuries.net suggest that the country has accumulated just 240 BTC (about $22.2 million) since 2022.

The 600,000 BTC figure is not based on onchain evidence. Rather, it is a mathematical estimate derived from Venezuela’s gold sales since 2018, including a 73-ton sale that year, which accounted for about 40% of the country’s gold reserves.

“If they actually possessed 600,000 Bitcoin, then they managed to fool a lot of blockchain analysts,” Whale Alert co-founder Frank Weert told Cointelegraph, adding: “They need to come with some serious proof for such a claim.”

Weert also expressed caution about the 240 BTC reported by BitcoinTreasuries, noting that its data is not always backed by verifiable transactions.

Venezuela adopted crypto early, but holdings remain opaque

“While we are still looking into potential Maduro regime crypto holdings, it’s important to note that the Maduro regime has been experimenting with cryptocurrencies for years — in fact, long before most other governments,” said Ari Redbord, global head of policy at blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs.

Under Maduro, Venezuela launched its oil-backed national digital currency, the Petro, in 2018, a project that was 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 noted, adding that Venezuela has routed oil sales through digital wallets rather than traditional banks.

Venezuela has also emerged as a major adopter of crypto amid spiraling inflation of its local currency, the bolívar; the country ranks 11th among the top 20 for crypto adoption in 2025, according to a report by TRM Labs.

Despite early adoption and growing popularity, Venezuela’s crypto holdings, including a potential Bitcoin reserve, remain opaque. Platforms like Arkham do not track Venezuelan government-linked wallets. Chainalysis and Elliptic declined to comment.

Aurelie Barthere, head of research at blockchain analytics platform Nansen, told Cointelegraph there are some Venezuela-linked wallet clusters, including state-aligned exchanges like Criptolago.

However, attribution remains difficult due to the use of “fragmented unhosted wallets and specialized offshore over-the-counter brokers to mask the ultimate destination of funds,” Barthere said.

“For large-scale asset conversion, one looks for ‘peeling chains’ where massive sums are fractionated into smaller, less suspicious transactions across long sequences of addresses,” the analyst said.

Barthere also mentioned multiple obfuscation methods including coin mixers like Tornado Cash, cross-chain swaps, and state-controlled mining for generating clean coins.

Related: US access to Venezuelan oil could eventually lower Bitcoin mining costs, Bitfinex says

“While advanced behavioral analytics and clustering heuristics can often reconstruct these trails, they remain highly effective at maintaining plausible deniability unless the underlying private keys are compromised,” she said.

Cointelegraph approached Whale Hunting’s Bradley Hope for comment regarding Venezuela’s alleged Bitcoin reserve and the US Department of Justice about a potential crypto seizure effort, but had not received any responses by publication.

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