MORE than 20 far-right groups and individuals received more than $500,000 in bitcoin payments ahead of last week’s riots at Capitol Hill in which five people were killed, research showed today.

The revelation has fuelled speculation that the storming of the US federal legislature may have been pre-planned, since the massive payment was made into 22 virtual wallets about a month before.

According to a blogpost by cryptocurrency monitoring group Chainalysis, a payments of 28.15 bitcoins was made by a French donor on December 8 in one single transaction.