$1B of Bitcoin Moved From Silk Road Wallet for the First Time Since 2015

An unidentified crypto user has recently shifted 69,370 BTC from an address linked to the Silk Road darknet market.

As per a report published on 3rd November by CipherTrace, a crypto intelligence firm, the movement concerning two transactions that amounted to 69,370 BTC or greater than $960 million during the time of publication had been derived from an address linked with Silk Road marketplace, that had been discontinued in 2013. The crypto user apparently did a trial transaction by sending 1 BTC, prior to moving the majority of coins. 

What is Silk Road?

Silk Road, a darknet market used to let the users purchase and sell unlawful goods like ammunition and credit card information illegitimately, but most of the catalogs were for illicit drugs. The site’s founder, Ross Ulbricht is presently completing his jail time without the probability of parole after being convicted for computer hacking, money laundering, and unlawfully trafficking narcotics. Despite that, he still gives his review on the BTC market from prison periodically. 

Ciphertrace conjectured the unidentified user did those transactions “to stay up to date with the Bitcoin network,” through shifting between address layouts, but it might be hacked. The last time, any person who had moved coins linked with a discontinued darknet market was back in April 2015.

Also, all the Bitcoin SV (BSV) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) linked with the tokens’ hard forks would supposedly be accessible by the BTC wallet. 

Nonetheless, Ciphertrace didn’t reject hacking as a probability:

“These movements could possibly mean that the wallet owner is moving funds to new addresses to prevent hackers from accessing the wallet.dat file or that hackers have already cracked the file.”

The Silk Road reserves were held in a wallet that had been moved between hackers for longer than two years. In the month of September, a Twitter account asserted to possess the wallet.dat.file for the wallet, posted to reach out to the crypto market for suggestions on how to obtain access to around 69,000 coins, also advising a quantum computer as a possible method to ascertain private keys.