In a recent transaction data, a popular darknet site Silk Road which sells drugs online seems to have moved USD 1 billion worth bitcoin from its cold wallet. In its early years, Bitcoin was known as the currency of the Darknet. People used it for all sought of activities taking full advantage of its anonymity. But growing maturity of cryptocurrencies the Bitcoin started moving from the hands of criminals to speculators and investors but its usage still seems to pretty rampant in Darknet.


Silk road Bitcoin wallet gets active, is a dump coming?

Silk Road was launched in February 2011 as the “first modern darknet market.” The platform allowed the users to buy and sell illegal things online anonymously. The Silk Road, however, was shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in October 2013. A year after, Silk Road 2.0 was launched but was also shut down, and the alleged owner, Ross Ulbricht, was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.

Since its inception and operations being around the same dates as that of Bitcoin inception and the popularity Silk Road garnered, it could be believed that the website could huge amount of Bitcoin lying in its wallet. According to the information provided by the Redditor named “sick_silk”

“The original wallet owned 111,114.62 $BTC / $ BCH, which is currently valued ~ $844M (without taking into account other #Bitcoin forks)” and “It seems that the owner of a huge #SilkRoad related wallet is moving funds actively since 3 days, dividing it in chunks of 100 coins by sub wallets.”

The Reddit also updated that these 60000 coins were moved in chucks and not all together. The owner of the wallet moved these coins in batches of 30,000 / 20,000 / 10,000 / 5,000 / 500 and now 100 coins.

Another point worth noting here is the wallet was last active on March 9th, 2014, which is some months after the sight was pulled down by FBI.


The Redditor also refers that he believes this wallet belongs to SilkRoad based on a bitcoin forum conversation which noted the same.

Although he said in his post updates, updated after being question by other users, that it could be a wallet related to The hacked infamous exchange Mt Gox, A whale holding Bitcoin since June 21st, 2011 or of Craig Wright who is currently facing a lawsuit since February 2018 over the rights to $5,118,266,427.50 worth of bitcoin claiming that Wright defrauded Kleiman(the estate of Dave Kleiman being the suitor) of bitcoins and intellectual property rights.

What are your thoughts on this comment? pic.twitter.com/o3KMJNn3Kt — xbtman (@decentraman) August 30, 2018

Also, read: Bitcoin Drops as Usual before Futures Expire, But 3 Facets state BTC Going Up

Could it be Mt Gox movements?

As the dates of crackdown for SilkRoad by FBI and hacking of Mt Gox being pretty close to the date of the last transaction, which is in early 2014, a lot of Redditors question it could be related to MT Gox. Mt Gox, the exchange that is known for the biggest and one of the first hacks in cryptocurrency world went bankrupt after losing about $473 million worth of BTC to hackers in 2014 when the value of bitcoin was around $480. A couple of days back it had reportedly started accepting claims for its creditors. On Aug. 23, Mt. Gox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi released an online submission process for creditors to prove their claims. If the proceedings towards claim go well, it would one of the biggest drivers to gain back the trust of the community against the industry that is marred by hacks and people losing their monies. The, now defunct, had also updated that repayments will be made in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Since this movement from the wallet has been in BTC and BCH a lot of people believe this movement is done by Mt Gox for repayment and it’s not SilkRoad.

Whether it is SilkRoad, Mt Gox or any other Whale for that matter, such large movements f cryptocurrencies are always scary. It also seems in the past as well when such large movement, especially in BTC, happen this is a huge dump that happens in the market, having a significant impact of prices. We should have a lot of clarity in days to come who was this mover and why this large chunk of BTC was moved.

Was it Mt Gox or SilkRoad and are we going to see a dump soon? Do let us know your views on the same.

To get the daily price analysis, Follow us on TradingView