First of all, spectacular moment of Bitcoin! The main asset just hit $15,631 per unit and still going, the whooping price only was registered back in 2017 when it reached the All-time-high (ATH) of $20,000 per coin! Are we in that way?! The time will tell.
Entering in the topic...
The feds have seized nearly $1B worth of Bitcoin tied up with the Silk Road darknet marketplace which was recently moved from the fourth largest wallet containing more than 69,000 bitcoins on Tuesday. The notice of Seizure by US authorities was first announced by Bloomberg.
It seems after all that the move of those assets was finally cracked by HAckers and the DOJ (Department of Justice) could track down and seize them.
Accordingly with Bloomberg, the US authorities seized approximately 69,370 Bitcoin, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SV, and Bitcoin Cash seized from 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbh, 20-cv-07811, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
Let's remember the case...
On Tuesday a notable quantity of Bitcoins were transferred from the fourth biggest wallet containing more than 69,000 bitcoins worth a whopping $955M in actual market prices, the movement sounded alarms as the assets on it only moved last time back in 2015 when the owners of the wallet send at least 100 bitcoins to the defunct exchange who allowed dubious funds to be exchanged and which was shut down by US authorities in 2017, the exchange was dubbed BTC-e.
A screenshot of the richest Bitcoin wallets on the crypto space, where can be seen the fourth largest wallet.
That was a large amount to not be tracked and soon the Elliptic, a Blockchain and analytics Firm, linked the fourth largest wallet containing Bitcoins with the also defunct darknet marketplace Silk Road founded by Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht is facing a double life sentence without right of parole for opening the most sophisticated market on darknet, who when was active generated more than $1B in revenue, with more than 150,000 buyers and 4000 vendors and accumulated more than 614,000 bitcoins mostly selling illegal goods.
Track from Elliptic shown the movement on the fourth largest wallet that originated in the main Silk Road darknet marketplace Bitcoin wallet.
At Silk Road users could buy almost everything with Bitcoin at the time, from guns, drugs even hiring hitmen.
Ross Ulbricht was arrested in 2015 and with him confiscated more than 174,000 bitcoins, worth at the time more than $105M but that amount is far less than what Silk Road actually generated and at the time many were the voices who wanted to know where the rest of assets were located which are supposed to be feeding rings on exchanges or still on the hands of associates of Ulbricht, for sure no one knows!
The move of 69,000 bitcoins was meaning two things:
The owner trying to move the assets to avoid being cracked the password by HAckers
The hackers finally cracked the wallet and transferred the amount to their wallets.
It seems the second option is more viable, taking in consideration that the US law enforcement forces were able to seize the assets from a Hacker known as Mister X on the statement made by the DOJ and can be followed on the Bloomberg website.
Well, the hacker had an exhausted work to crack the wallet and in the end he didn't even enjoyed the amount that could change his life, a whopping $1 billion dollars that can feed a whole township in Africa and not all, some parts of the world too, crime doesn't compensate!
