Silk Road BTC sale? The US Government Transfers $1B in BTC
Throughout the years, American law enforcement has seized thousands of BTC from the Silk Road and auctioned some of it.
Around 50,000 Bitcoin, worth $1 billion, were moved from several wallets associated to US government law enforcement seizures to other addresses, including Coinbase on March 8.
On-chain analytics startup PeckShield reported three wallet transfers from U.S. law enforcement agencies. These wallets contained almost 51,000 BTC confiscated by U.S. officials from Silk Road in November 2021. Two wallets received the seized Bitcoin.
Source: Twitter
Internal transfers dominate these three. Coinbase received around 9,861 Bitcoin. 30,000 and 9,000 Bitcoin transfers are the others.
Source: Glassnode
Modern darknet markets began with the Silk Road. It was founded by American Ross Ulbricht as “Dread Pirate Roberts” in 2011. The marketplace pioneered Bitcoin payments, popularizing crypto. The founder’s possessions, including Bitcoin, have been auctioned by U.S. authorities.
In 2014, Bitcoin advocate Tim Draper acquired over 30,000 BTC. In October 2015, the U.S. Marshals Service auctioned 21 blocks of 2,000 BTC and one of 2,341 online for 50,000 BTC.
Although just a tiny amount of the 50,000 BTC was delivered to Coinbase, Twitter users’ emotions and hypotheses were wild. One said that U.S. authorities selling Silk Road Bitcoin would put tremendous selling pressure on the market. Others questioned the sale’s timing.
