Reports indicate that a significant amount of bitcoin, approximately 9,800, that was associated with Silk Road has been transferred. This is believed to be the largest movement of funds related to the now-defunct darknet marketplace in months.
The transfer involves 8,200 bitcoin being moved to new wallets. The remaining funds are being sent to change wallets, and there is a debate as to whether this officially counts as a transfer since they may be returned to their original wallets under different addresses.
In the first transaction, 0.01 BTC is being sent to the wallet 361yog, while 506 BTC is being sent to a change address. These funds come primarily from two wallets.
The second transaction involves sending 8,200 BTC to the 361yog wallet, and 1,118 BTC to a separate change address. These funds originally came from the same wallet.
The Silk Road bitcoin
In November 2022, James Zhong was found guilty of wire fraud in relation to the hack of 50,000 bitcoin from Silk Road back in 2012. As a result, the U.S. government seized the same amount of bitcoin from Zhong. In April, Zhong was sentenced for his crime.
During the legal proceedings, details of Bitcoin wallets related to Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht were disclosed, and blockchain analytics firms were able to track these addresses.
In June, there was a transfer of funds that appeared to be linked to the Silk Road wallets, but it was unclear whether the U.S. government was in control of the funds. The wallet in question was only one step away from wallets mentioned in legal documents related to the case, and the transfer of funds also followed a similar pattern, utilizing the ‘replace by fee’ option.
As noted by the online pubcalition the Block , back in March, the U.S. government sold 9,861 bitcoin and said it planned to sell the remaining bitcoin in four more batches throughout the year.
The government has around 41,490 bitcoin left from the funds it seized in the Zhong case.
The U.S. government appears to have been selling its bitcoin on Coinbase, an exchange that the SEC claims is an unregistered securities exchange.
