FBI-Linked Bitcoin Wallets Hold $1.40B as Strangers Spam the Chain

The FBI's most wanted crypto wallets are getting fan mail. According to tokenpost.com, 19 Bitcoin addresses the bureau linked to a Binance theft have absorbed 77 small transfers and 59 messages written straight onto the blockchain using Bitcoin's OP_RETURN feature — and the BTC sitting there hasn't budged.

The stash is 18,270.2 BTC, worth roughly $1.40 billion at $76,748 per coin as of 12:14 a.m. ET on Nov. 3. Every satoshi of the original haul stays put. The wallets' inbox, however, is a different story.

The notes read like a crypto fever dream. Senders asked for financial help, shilled the $NST token ecosystem and a CRC-20 Bitcoin lending protocol, and pleaded with the holders not to return the money to Binance. One determined sender fired off three rounds of requests — 18 addresses first, then all 19 twice more — spending about $45 in BTC, or $49 once fees are counted.

Getting a message onto the chain isn't free or private. OP_RETURN lets anyone staple text to a transaction that the whole world can read, and it takes a small BTC transfer to make it show up in an address's history. No permission from the recipient required.

The addresses landed on the FBI's list Oct. 31, in a warning that pinned the theft of more than $6 billion from Binance on North Korea's TraderTraitor group. The bureau told crypto firms to block transactions involving those addresses or anything derived from them, as part of the wider U.S. response to the hack.

The money isn't only on Bitcoin rails. A look at the Solana side shows how fast funds can slip away. An FBI-flagged SOL address pushed out roughly 14,000 SOL at 8:37 p.m. ET on Nov. 2. Minutes later, about 399,000 SOL remained — around $36.9 million at $92.50 a token — meaning roughly 59% of the tracked amount had already moved. Relay said Nov. 2 it was teaming up with Binance and law enforcement to jam the flow through its service, warning some transactions or routes could be paused or delayed.