Security News > 2020 > November > Feds Seize $1B in Bitcoin from Silk Road

The feds have seized its largest stash ever of Bitcoin, originating from the notorious Silk Road underground marketplace.

In 2014, the FBI auctioned off 30,000 Bitcoins that the government seized in the initial takedown, which were housed in wallet files stored on Silk Road servers.

Silk Road had well over 100,000 buyers, and was able launder hundreds of millions of dollars derived from unlawful transactions, according to the complaint.

At the time of its takedown, Silk Road had nearly 13,000 listings for controlled substances and "Many more listings offering illegal services, such as computer hacking and murder for hire," which translated into sales of 9.5 million Bitcoin; and commissions of 600,000 Bitcoin.

Although Silk Road used blockchain to obscure the money trail and discourage tracking, the IRS-CI used a third-party Bitcoin attribution company and was ultimately able to trace the allegedly stolen funds to a Bitcoin address owned by "Individual X.".

News URL

https://threatpost.com/feds-seize-1b-bitcoin-silk-road/161027/