by John Smith 
“The largest cryptocurrency seizure in the agency’s history,” the US Department of Justice said.
69,370 bitcoins BTC as well as other altcoins such as bitcoin cash (BCH), bitcoin gold (BTG) or bitcoin satoshi vision (BSV) were seized by the American authorities, or more than a billion dollars!
Silk Road was a darknet website well known for being a marketplace for many illegal activities such as the sale of weapons, drugs, stolen credit cards, child pornography, drugs, lists of stolen passwords, etc.
Silk road was seized and closed by the FBI on October 2, 2013.
Payments on this darweb platform which were therefore made in Bitcoin or with other cryptocurrencies
Its founder, Ross Ulbricht, who operated under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, operated this darknet website from 2011 until his 2013 arrest in San Franciso and is currently serving a life sentence in the United States.
Following his arrest, thousands of Silk Road Bitcoins had therefore remained on crypto wallets, without knowing who could have access to them.
A few days ago, a billion dollar Bitcoin move drew attention to these thousands of BTCs that therefore moved from Silk Road’s crypto wallet, with some believing someone linked to Silk Road or its founder had access to these crypto funds.
The mystery of this transfer of 69,370 BTC tokens has therefore just been solved, the United States Department of Justice has indicated that it is seizing this billion dollars in Bitcoin, as official documents reveal.
“Silk Road was the most famous online criminal market of its time. The successful pursuit of the Silk Road founder in 2015 left a billion dollar question open. Where did the money go? Today’s confiscation complaint at least partially answers that open question,” said U.S. District Attorney David Anderson for the Northern District of California.
The United States Department of Justice is therefore taking legal action for the confiscation of thousands of bitcoins they recently seized and which were previously held by a hacker.
US authorities say the hacker stole the Silk Road treasure and transferred those thousands of BTCs to a crypto wallet where they remained from April 2013 until Tuesday’s seizure.
Prosecutors indicate that the hacker consented to the seizure of these Bitcoins and their transfer to the authorities of the United States.
The US government is therefore getting its hands on an impressive jackpot in Bitcoin BTC, over $1 billion, which should therefore be resold on the market in an auction as usual.
The biggest cryptocurrency seizure in history by the US authorities, at a time when the Bitcoin price breaks new records by climbing again to 16,000 dollars!
