Following President Donald Trump’s pardon of Silk Highway founder Ross Ulbricht Tuesday, the Bitcoin group has rallied, pouring crypto into Ulbricht’s donation fund at FreeRoss.org. However does he want the cash?
Ulbricht might already be sitting on hundreds of thousands in Bitcoin, in response to Conor Grogan, a director on the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency trade Coinbase. Grogan famous that round 430 BTC—price roughly $47 million—awaits untouched in wallets presumably linked to Ulbricht. These wallets have been dormant for over 13 years, he mentioned.
“I discovered ~430 BTC throughout dozens of wallets related to Ross Ulbricht that weren’t confiscated by the [U.S. government] and have been untouched for 13+ years,” Grogan posted on X. “Again then these had been in all probability mud wallets, now, collectively, they’re price about $47 million,” Grogan continued.
In line with Arkham Intelligence information, fourteen Bitcoin addresses linked to the Silk Highway collectively maintain $47 million in Bitcoin, confirming the determine from Grogan. The cluster of wallets recognized as “Silk Highway” on Arkham contains the account starting in “1CQv” that Grogan shared in a screenshot, and which alone holds over $9 million in Bitcoin.
Decrypt has but to independently affirm that these wallets do, the truth is, belong to Ulbricht, or whether or not these funds have been beforehand marked for seizure by the U.S. authorities. No less than one pockets included in Arkham’s Silk Highway cluster—the account recognized as “Silk Highway: Particular person X (1HQ3G)”—was beforehand accessed by the U.S. authorities throughout a forfeiture process in November 2020.
When the Bitcoin in pockets “1HQ3G” was first moved again in 2020, on the time price over $1 billion, hypothesis abounded then too that Ulbricht had one way or the other maintained entry and transferred the cash even whereas behind bars. It was solely days later that the U.S. authorities solved the riddle by asserting it had confiscated the funds from a hacker—recognized solely as “Particular person X”—who had stolen the Bitcoin from a Silk Highway account in 2012 or 2013.
If the wallets holding a Bitcoin treasure of greater than $47 million belong to the erstwhile Silk Highway founder, it’s unknown if he nonetheless holds the non-public keys to any of them. The cash might be unretrievable; as a lot as 20% of the whole provide of Bitcoin is believed to be in wallets whose house owners misplaced the keys, died or disappeared, together with the pockets of Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, which holds 1.1 million BTC (round $115 billion price.)
Ulbricht has not given any interviews since his launch, nor replied to Grogan on X. Decrypt has reached out to Ulbricht for remark.
In the meantime, donations have been flowing into Ulbricht since his launch from the federal penitentiary on Tuesday. The cryptocurrency trade Kraken contributed $111,111 to Ulbricht on Wednesday.
In line with Arkham Intelligence, his pockets tackle has acquired 2.62 BTC, roughly $272,000, which incorporates the Kraken donation. One other tackle related to Ulbricht has collected $4,615 in Ethereum, USDC, Tether (USDT), and Binance Coin (BNB).
“At this fee, he’ll have $1 million in 3 days,” journalist Pete Rizzo mentioned on X.
Even when Ulbricht controls the wallets in query, whether or not the U.S. authorities would try and confiscate any Silk Highway-related cash is as but unknown. Earlier this month, a federal choose licensed the sale of $6.5 billion seized Silk Highway Bitcoin. And crypto authorized consultants inform Decrypt that federal authorities might come after any Silk Highway-related Bitcoin.
“If the authorities discover property later that they will hyperlink to the unique crime(s), they might attempt to seize these even after launch, assuming the statute of limitations has not expired,” Eli Cohen, Basic Counsel at tokenized asset platform Centrifuge, advised Decrypt.
A lot of the Bitcoin america at present holds is partly resulting from these seized by the U.S. Division of Justice. Cohen pointed to the 50,676 Bitcoin the IRS seized from one other Silk Highway hacker, James Zhong, in November 2021. “Usually, for federal crimes, the authorities would have frozen or confiscated any funds they imagine are proceeds of the crime, together with crypto like Bitcoin,” Cohen mentioned.
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