Following President Donald Trump’s pardon of Silk Highway founder Ross Ulbricht Tuesday, the Bitcoin neighborhood has rallied, pouring crypto into Ulbricht’s donation fund at FreeRoss.org. However does he want the cash?
Ulbricht might already be sitting on tens of millions in Bitcoin, based on Conor Grogan, a director on the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency alternate Coinbase. Grogan famous that round 430 BTC—value roughly $47 million—awaits untouched in wallets probably linked to Ulbricht. These wallets have been dormant for over 13 years, he stated.
“I discovered ~430 BTC throughout dozens of wallets related to Ross Ulbricht that weren’t confiscated by the [U.S. government] and have been untouched for 13+ years,” Grogan posted on X. “Again then these had been most likely mud wallets, now, collectively, they’re value about $47 million,” Grogan continued.
Based on Arkham Intelligence knowledge, fourteen Bitcoin addresses linked to the Silk Highway collectively maintain $47 million in Bitcoin, confirming the determine from Grogan. The cluster of wallets recognized as “Silk Highway” on Arkham contains the account starting in “1CQv” that Grogan shared in a screenshot, and which alone holds over $9 million in Bitcoin.
Decrypt has but to independently affirm that these wallets do, in actual fact, belong to Ulbricht, or whether or not these funds have been beforehand marked for seizure by the U.S. authorities. A minimum of one pockets included in Arkham’s Silk Highway cluster—the account recognized as “Silk Highway: Particular person X (1HQ3G)”—was beforehand accessed by the U.S. authorities throughout a forfeiture process in November 2020.
When the Bitcoin in pockets “1HQ3G” was first moved again in 2020, on the time value over $1 billion, hypothesis abounded then too that Ulbricht had someway maintained entry and transferred the cash even whereas behind bars. It was solely days later that the U.S. authorities solved the riddle by saying it had confiscated the funds from a hacker—recognized solely as “Particular person X”—who had stolen the Bitcoin from a Silk Highway account in 2012 or 2013.
If the wallets holding a Bitcoin treasure of greater than $47 million belong to the erstwhile Silk Highway founder, it’s unknown if he nonetheless holds the non-public keys to any of them. The cash could possibly be unretrievable; as a lot as 20% of the overall provide of Bitcoin is believed to be in wallets whose homeowners misplaced the keys, died or disappeared, together with the pockets of Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, which holds 1.1 million BTC (round $115 billion value.)
Ulbricht has not given any interviews since his launch, nor replied to Grogan on X. Decrypt has reached out to Ulbricht for remark.
In the meantime, donations have been flowing into Ulbricht since his launch from the federal penitentiary on Tuesday. The cryptocurrency alternate Kraken contributed $111,111 to Ulbricht on Wednesday.
Based on Arkham Intelligence, his pockets tackle has obtained 2.62 BTC, roughly $272,000, which incorporates the Kraken donation. One other tackle related to Ulbricht has collected $4,615 in Ethereum, USDC, Tether (USDT), and Binance Coin (BNB).
“At this fee, he’ll have $1 million in 3 days,” journalist Pete Rizzo stated on X.
Even when Ulbricht controls the wallets in query, whether or not the U.S. authorities would try and confiscate any Silk Highway-related cash is as but unknown. Earlier this month, a federal choose licensed the sale of $6.5 billion seized Silk Highway Bitcoin. And crypto authorized specialists inform Decrypt that federal authorities might come after any Silk Highway-related Bitcoin.
“If the authorities discover property later that they will hyperlink to the unique crime(s), they may attempt to seize these even after launch, assuming the statute of limitations has not expired,” Eli Cohen, Common Counsel at tokenized asset platform Centrifuge, instructed Decrypt.
A lot of the Bitcoin the US presently holds is partly because of these seized by the U.S. Division of Justice. Cohen pointed to the 50,676 Bitcoin the IRS seized from one other Silk Highway hacker, James Zhong, in November 2021. “Usually, for federal crimes, the authorities would have frozen or confiscated any funds they imagine are proceeds of the crime, together with crypto like Bitcoin,” Cohen stated.
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