Blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic says that a wallet possibly belonging to the early darknet market “Silk Road” moved close to US$1 billion worth of bitcoins on Wednesday. 

Ross Ulbricht sentenced to a double life sentence on February 4th, 2015, as the creator and operator of the Silk Road darknet marketplace. The darknet marketplace operated using two groundbreaking technologies at the time. The privacy-protecting technology Tor browser combining with Bitcoin paved the way for anonymous trade of illicit goods and services. 

Ross William Ulbricht (born March 27, 1984) is an American best known for creating and operating the darknet market website Silk Road from 2011 until his arrest in 2013

The Silk Road

Silk Road was a marketplace close to 150,000 buyers and 4,000 sellers and accounted for revenue of US$ 183 million at the time. With the apprehension of Ulbricht, the FBI seized approximately 174,000 Bitcoin worth close to US$ 105 million market value at that time. However, the Silk Road’s total commissions earned by transactions are believed to be more than 614,000 Bitcoins. Rumor is that Ulbricht is likely to be holding those Bitcoin in secret wallets after his expenditure for running the site those days. 

Tom Robinson, the Chief Scientist & CO-Founder at Elliptic states, in his update:

“Fast forward to today and, a notable bitcoin transaction has just taken place. 69,369 bitcoins, worth close to $1 billion, moved out of the bitcoin address 
1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx, which until this point had the fourth-highest balance of any bitcoin address. This address is also notable because an encrypted file has been circulating on hacker forums for the past year, which purportedly contains the cryptographic keys required to seize the bitcoins in this address. If genuine, cracking the password on this file would allow these bitcoins to be moved.”

However, it is highly unlikely that Ulbricht or a vendor from Silk Road is moving their Bitcoins today, which is worth approximately US$ 955 million. Another theory is that the encrypted wallet file may have been real and, the password must have been cracked in return allowing the Bitcoin to be moved.