As per a report published by crypto intelligence firm Cipher Trace, the latest transfer of 69,370 Bitcoins (BTC), worth over $960 million, carried out via two transactions, had its origin in the Silk Road marketplace, which was locked down in 2013.
The anonymous Bitcoin holder initially transferred 1 Bitcoin, usually done to check whether everything is in order, before transferring the rest of the aforesaid quantity.
Ciphertrace assumes that the anonymous Bitcoin holder conduction the transactions to live “up to date with the Bitcoin network” by transferring the cryptos to an address based on latest format. Back in April 2015, a similar transaction associated non-functional darknet market was observed.
At that time, the Bitcoin wallet also held Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) which were awarded when Bitcoin blockchain was subject to hardfork.
However, the firm didn’t rule out hacking as a possibility:
“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 funds were held in a wallet, whose details had been in circulation among hackers of over two years. Back in September, through a tweet, an unknown individual claimed to possess the wallet.dat file and asked help from the crypto community for gaining access to over 69,000 Bitcoins. Some suggested using a quantum computer to gain access to private keys.
Silk Road refers to a darknet market which facilitated users to purchase and sell illegal goods including weapons and rustled credit card data, but a major portion of listings were usually related to illegal drugs.
Ross Ulbricht, the person behind Silk Road, is serving two consecutive life-terms without the likelihood of a parole after being judged as guilty for computer hacking, money laundering and implementing secret plan to trade narcotics. He still offers regular analysis reports on Bitcoin market from prison.