On November 3, the US Department of Justice confiscated 69,370 BTC. These coins originate from the Silk Road darknet marketplace.
https://twitter.com/crypto/status/1324402492290015234?s=20
- crypto
Law enforcement officers also confiscated an equivalent number in Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Gold. The agency emphasized that this is the largest amount of cryptocurrency ever confiscated by the US authorities.
According to the court document, the owner of the address, who goes by the pseudonym Invididual X, hacked into Silk Road and stole the coins. In a previous post, I already wrote that they were taken out of the darknet market on May 6, 2012. A year after their withdrawal, they were transferred to the address where they had been kept until the moment of confiscation.
On November 3, Invididual X signed an agreement to transfer the coins to law enforcement. On November 4, the price of coins exceeded $ 1 billion amid rising bitcoin prices.
https://twitter.com/nathanielpopper/status/1324404769339764736?s=20
- nathanielpopper
The document says that Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who is serving a life sentence, threatened Invididual X in an attempt to recover the funds, but did not succeed.
https://twitter.com/UnderTheBreach/status/1324407321620074498?s=20
- UnderTheBreach
Chainalysis assisted the authorities in tracking 54 transactions with Silk Road.
https://twitter.com/chainalysis/status/1324423501063852032?s=20
- chainalysis
Silk Road is believed to have earned 614,000 BTC in commissions, although only 174,000 BTC was seized from Ross Ulbricht upon arrest.