FBI seized $3.5 million of Bitcoins from Silk Road
Following the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the alleged founder of Silk Road, FBI seized the site’s assets which primarily consists of Bitcoins. The FBI seized over 26,000 Bitcoins contained in wallet files residing on Silk Road servers. The federally controlled Bitcoin account now renamed to “Silkroad Seized Coins” contains over $3.5 million worth of the digital currency.
As of now, the FBI controlled account has received 192 transactions, mostly came from pranksters, sending tiny amounts of Bitcoins with public message, and the account holds 27,365.89968607 BTC. An FBI spokesperson said ““We will download the Bitcoin and store them,” and continued “We will hold them until the judicial process is over.” What’s next? “This is kind of new to us,” FBI said. “We will probably just liquidate them.”
The spokesperson says the approximately 26,000 Bitcoins seized are just the ones that were held in Silk Road accounts. In other words, it’s Silk Road users’ Bitcoin that were seized. FBI has not been able to get Ulbricht’s personal Bitcoin yet. “That’s like another $80 million worth,” she said. His personal wallet is held separately and is encrypted. If that is indeed what he’s holding, that’s close to 600,000 Bitcoin all together or about 5% of all Bitcoin currently in existence.
