A crypto analytics firm says the US government is suddenly handing over massive amounts of Bitcoin it seized from the defunct nefarious marketplace Silk Road.
According to PeckShield, the US just sent 9,826 BTC worth $217 million to Coinbase where it could be sold on the open market.
An additional 39,175 BTC worth $867 million was transferred to two new addresses that appear to be internally controlled and not linked to any exchange.
#PeckShieldAlert 49k $BTC (worth $1 billion) from purses related to seizures by U.S. government law enforcement agencies have been transferred to #Coinbase (~9.8k $BTCworth $217 million), bc1qf2…fsv (30k $BTC) & bc1qe7…rdg (9k $BTC) #SilkRoad pic.twitter.com/4MzlvDzkut
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) March 8, 2023
Silk Road was an online black market created by Ross Ulbrich in 2011.
The marketplace used BTC for payments at a time when many assumed the major crypto assets enabled completely anonymous transfers that could evade law enforcement, which is not the case.
Silk Road was closed in 2013 and Ulbrich is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole after being convicted of participating in an ongoing criminal enterprise, distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics over the internet, conspiracy to commit narcotics conspiracy to money laundering, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents and conspiracy to commit computer hacking.
The US seized 51,351 BTC connected to Silk Road in November 2021 and March last year.
The price of Bitcoin has continued to fall this week along with stocks.
BTC is trading at $22,154 at time of release, down 0.3% in the past 24 hours.
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Featured image: Shutterstock/Melinda Nagy