Following President Donald Trump’s forgive of Silk Road leader Ross Ulbricht Tuesday, the Bitcoin community has rallied, pouring blockchain into Ulbritcht’s payment account at FreeRoss. nonprofit. But does he need the money?
Ulbricht could already be sitting on million in Bitcoin, according to Conor Grogan, a chairman at the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Ethereum. Grogan noted that around 430 BTC—worth approximately$ 47 million —awaits untouched in pockets possibly linked to Ulbricht. These cards have been dormant for over 13 times, he said.
“ I found ~430 BTC across lots of cards associated with Ross Ulbricht that were not confiscated by the [ U. S. government ] and have been untouched for 13+ years, ” Grogan posted on X. “Back then these were probably dust wallets, now, collectively, they are worth about$ 47 million, ” Grogan continued.
According to Arkham Intelligence information, fourteen Crypto addresses linked to the Silk Road collectively keep$ 47 million in Bitcoin, confirming the number from Grogan. The cluster of wallets identified as “Silk Road ” on Arkham includes the account beginning in “1CQv” that Grogan shared in a screenshot, and which alone holds over$ 9 million in Bitcoin.
has yet to individually verify that these cards do, in reality, belong to Ulbricht, or whether these resources have been recently marked for arrest by the U. S. authorities. At least one wallet included in Arkham’s Silk Road cluster—the account identified as “Silk Road: Individual X ( 1HQ3G) ”—was previously accessed by the U. S. state during a forfeiture treatment in November 2020.
When the Bitcoin in wallet “1HQ3G” was first moved back in 2020, at the time worth over$ 1 billion, speculation abounded then too that Ulbricht had somehow maintained access and transferred the coins even while behind bars. It was only weeks after that the U. S. state solved the puzzle by announcing it had confiscated the money from a hacker—identified even as “Individual X”—who had stolen the Bitcoin from a Silk Road accounts in 2012 or 2013.
If the wallets holding a Bitcoin treasure of more than$ 47 million belong to the erstwhile Silk Road founder, it ’s unknown if he still holds the private keys to any of them. The money may become unretrievable; as much as 20 % of the entire supply of Bitcoin is believed to be in pockets whose users lost the locks, died or disappeared, including the bag of Bitcoin engineer Satoshi Nakamoto, which holds 1. 1 million BTC (around$ 115 billion price. )
Ulbricht has not given any discussions since his discharge, nor replied to Grogan on X. has reached out to Ulbricht for remark.
However, donations have been flowing into Ulbricht since his discharge from the federal prison on Tuesday. The crypto change Kraken contributed$ 111,111 to Ulbricht on Wednesday.
According to Arkham Intelligence, his pocket target has received 2. 62 BTC, roughly$ 272,000, which includes the Kraken payment. Another address/bc1qzrkdfpc4dxyyg6axvstft7sx8vhgverhvyv82y” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow external noopener” class=”sc-adb616fe-0 bJsyml”>address associated with Ulbricht has collected$ 4,615 in Ethereum, USDC, Tether ( USDT), and Binance Coin ( BNB).
“At this rate, he’ll have$ 1 million in 3 days, ” journalist Pete Rizzo said on X.
Yet if Ulbricht controls the cards in question, whether the U. S. government may try to remove any Silk Road-related income is because yet unknown. Earlier this month, a federal judge authorized the sale of$ 6. 5 billion seized Silk Road Bitcoin. And crypto constitutional authorities tell that national authorities had come after any Silk Road-related Bitcoin.
“If the authorities find assets later that they can link to the original crime( s ), they could try to seize these even after release, assuming the statute of limitations has not expired, ” Eli Cohen, General Counsel at tokenized asset platform Centrifuge, told
Much of the Bitcoins the United States currently holds is largely due to those seized by the U. S. Department of Justice. Cohen pointed to the 50,676 Bitcoin the IRS seized from another Silk Road attacker, James Zhong, in November 2021. “Normally, for federal crimes, the authorities would have frozen or confiscated any funds they believe are proceeds of the crime, including crypto like Bitcoin, ” Cohen said.
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