US Justice Department seizes over $1 billion worth of Silk Road bitcoins

On November 5, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had filed a lawsuit to seize $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency associated with the underground black market Silk Road. The seizure is the largest crypto seizure in U.S. history.

In the document, the DOJ revealed that the seized funds included more than 69,370 Bitcoins and nearly equal amounts of BTG, BSV, and BCH.

Following the DOJ’s announcement, blockchain data analytics firm Chainalysis explained that “law enforcement officials used Chainalysis tools and investigative assistance to identify the largest cryptocurrency wallet associated with Silk Road.”

They analyzed Bitcoin transactions executed by Silk Road and identified 54 previously undetected Bitcoin transactions that represented proceeds from illegal activity. They also discovered that a hacker named X stole these funds from Silk Road.

However, the person has now agreed to hand over the funds starting Monday. The document also revealed a wallet address associated with the hacker: 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbh.

As previously reported by BitPush, on Tuesday, $1 billion worth of Bitcoin (believed to have originated from Silk Road) was moved from a Bitcoin wallet associated with the above address. Today, the mystery was solved, and it was actually law enforcement that transferred the Bitcoin to a government-controlled wallet.

Since 2014, the U.S. Marshals Service has auctioned off about 175,000 bitcoins seized from Silk Road, whose founder, Ross Ulbricht, was sentenced to life in prison for money laundering, hacking and conspiracy to traffic in drugs.

It is unclear whether the government will now auction off the existing seized funds.

Image source: pixabay

byAmy Liu

This article comes from Bitpush.News. Reprinting must indicate the source.