The fourth largest wallet with around 69,369 bitcoins worth at actual market prices $955.000,000 moved this assets to a new wallet after years of dormant, to note only in 2015 the assets on it was lastly moved to the BTC-e an exchange that allowed at the time to launder Bitcoins and was shut down by the US enforcement forces in 2017.
The movement of those Bitcoins sounded the alarm on specialists in the field and to help understand more what could be the reasons on the move the blockchain analytics Firm Elliptic in their blog, made notable discovers and linked the recent moved assets to the dark web marketplace Silk Road founded by Ross Ulbricht.
Silk Road darknet marketplace was created and managed by Ross Ulbricht, and was active from 2011 and shut down in 2013 after two years on the dark web, and Ross arrested where he faces a double life sentence in prison. The Silk Road when was active attracted more than 150,000 buyers and 4000 vendors generating more than $183,000 sales at the time worth in Bitcoin.
When the founder was arrested some of this Bitcoin was seized by the US government and more than 170,000 Bitcoins worth a whopping $105M at time were taken and later sold on auction by US authorities.
Well, those bitcoins seized by US government wasn't all the revenue made by Silk Road, which is estimated that are something more or less than 614,000 Bitcoins, which making some maths can be clearly seen that more than 440,000 Bitcoins were never found out which destiny took and are probably spread on the crypto space right now and feeding exchanges and other markets.
The Elliptic blog track the fourth largest wallet move and cogitate that the movers are linked to Silk Road darknet marketplace, of course won't be Ross Ulbricht due to his condition (jailed facing double life sentence) but equation that one of his associates made the move. Another possibility, could be the hackers who finally cracked the password and got "rewarded" with a billion dollar worth in Bitcoin.
In the Blog, it also possible to note a well elaborated and precise timeline of the facts.
One thing is certain on the Elliptic blog, the just moved 69,369 bitcoins worth more than $950M are original from Silk Road darknet marketplace and left the original wallet on May 6th 2012, at the time the amount was value something like $350,000 and some of it was sold on an exchange who allowed dubious funds to be negotiated dubbed BTC-e and in 2017 was shut down by US government. They only sold 101 in 2015 and since then no more moved was registered until recently moved out all bitcoins on it.
Right now no one knows who actually own the funds and where they going or what is the plan with the movement (could be the owner moving them to protect them from being cracked by HAckers or could be the hackers who finally cracked the password and moved the assets to a new wallet) but one thing must be taken in consideration! The exchanges must lookout for this funds that came from a dubious origin, of course won't be easy to track them down but with some efforts from them maybe some could be found and fullfil their compliance obligations.
There are plenty of assets on the dark web and many of this assets have been used by people who want to curb the authorities to purchase illegal stuff on it, stuff that isn't legal and only can be found on this marketplaces, Silk Road darknet were a very famous one most due to what Ulbricht and his companions could sell in there, stuff that normally couldn't found in stores such as eBay could be purchased in his website, from illegal guns to drugs and Bitcoin was the exchange currency there. To note that isn't Bitcoin responsible to the exchanges and no one can assume that the coin could be used to illegal business, but the persons who use the asset to buy illegal material on darknet.
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