Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, wrote in a post: "The current balance of bitcoin available to the US government as a strategic reserve is up to 88,000 BTC, which is only 43% of the current government holdings. This is because of the approximately 198,000 BTC currently held by the US government, 112,000 BTC will be returned to Bitfinex." Note: The large amount of BTC held by the US government came from the detection of the Bitfinex theft that year. The original case occurred in August 2016. About 120,000 BTC was lost when it was stolen. Bitfinex is trying to recover this part of BTC. It is expected that the follow-up will still require a lengthy legal process.