Breaking News! 69,000 Bitcoins from Silk Road were transferred, worth nearly $1 billion

Beijing time, November 4th, according to a report released by encryption intelligence company CipherTrace, an anonymous cryptocurrency user transferred 69,370 BTC from an address related to the Silk Road dark web market. This is the first time that the Bitcoin at this address has moved since 2015. As of press time, the value of these Bitcoins is close to US$1 billion.

According to analysis, the bitcoins originated from an address associated with the Silk Road marketplace that was shut down in 2013. The anonymous cryptocurrency user first sent 1 BTC before moving the coins, possibly as a test transaction.

As of now, it remains unknown who controls these Bitcoins, and CipherTrace has not even ruled out the possibility of a hack:

“The movement of these funds could mean that the wallet owner moved the funds to a new address to prevent the hacker from accessing the wallet.dat file, or that the hacker has cracked the file.”

It is reported that the funds of Silk Road are hidden in a wallet, which has been circulating in the hacker circle for more than two years. In September this year, a Twitter user claimed to have this wallet.dat wallet file and asked the cryptocurrency community for a solution to access the more than 69,000 bitcoins, and even suggested using a quantum computer to crack the private key.

It is reported that Silk Road was once the largest dark web market, which allows users to use Bitcoin to buy and sell illegal items such as drugs and weapons. The founder of the website, Ross Ulbricht, is currently serving two life sentences. He was convicted of money laundering, computer hacking and conspiracy to traffic in drugs. He is currently still in prison and regularly analyzes the Bitcoin market.