A complete of 33.7 bitcoin (BTC), value over $3 million, has been moved from wallets linked to Silk Highway after almost 5 years of inactivity.
It’s unclear precisely who’s behind the transfers, although the consolidated funds had been later despatched to a Coinbase Prime deposit handle.
The transactions — 176 in all — had been flagged by X account DarkWebInformer, which referenced a bundle of Silk Highway-labelled addresses on blockchain explorer Arkham.
Small portions of BTC had been transferred from many separate addresses throughout the bundle to a single consolidation handle, bc1qnysx9sr0s7uw39awr3hh099d5m0lvrnxz7ga54.
Roughly 24 hours after the final switch from the Silk Highway bundle, the 33.7 BTC had been despatched on to an intermediate handle earlier than shifting to an handle labelled “Coinbase Prime Deposit.”
Previous to the current exercise, the final outgoing transaction from the bundled addresses was despatched on February 2, 2021.
Roughly 416 BTC value $37.5 million stays within the addresses.
The Silk Highway saga
Silk Highway was a (predominantly drugs-focused) darknet market operational between 2011 and 2013. Gross sales had been settled in BTC, with the location taking a charge.
It was shut down following founder Ross Ulbricht’s arrest, and 144,336 BTC had been seized. The funds, bought in 2017 for $48 million, could be value $13 billion in the present day.
Additional seizures of funds associated to Silk Highway occurred in November 2020 and November 2021, for over $1 billion and $3 billion value of BTC, respectively.
A yr later, James “Jimmy” Zhong pled responsible to stealing these funds from {the marketplace} in 2012.
Two former federal brokers had been additionally charged for “stealing digital currency during their investigation” of Silk Highway.
After serving virtually 10 years, Ulbricht was freed by way of a presidential pardon in January.
Who’s behind the strikes?
It’s unsure who made the transfers, however wild hypothesis amongst X customers ranges from the suggestion of an “FBI agent fixing to retire,” to Mt Gox’s Mark Karpeles, “the real Silk Road owner.”
Along with the Silk Highway bundle, Arkham lists individually labelled entities together with “US Government: Silk Road DOJ Confiscated Funds,” “US Government: Ross Ulbricht Confiscated Funds,” “James Zhong,” and “Silk Road Hacker.”
The transfers originate from “legacy” BTC addresses starting with the primary, indicating they’re outdated, Silk Highway-era addresses.
Certainly, their transaction histories present exercise earlier than remaining funds had been moved into labelled seizure wallets 12 years in the past. The current consolidation transfers are of the remaining low-value “dust” left behind after the seizure interval.
