SSeveral wallets related to Ross Ulbricht reportedly maintain roughly 430 Bitcoin that weren’t confiscated by the U.S. authorities, in keeping with a Coinbase government.
Conor Grogan, Coinbase’s director of product technique, claimed in a put up on X on Jan. 22 that he recognized dozens of wallets tied to the Silk Highway founder. These wallets cumulatively maintain about 430 Bitcoin (BTC), which have remained untouched for greater than 13 years.
“I discovered ~430 BTC throughout dozens of wallets related to Ross Ulbricht that weren’t confiscated by the USGovt and have been untouched for 13+ years. Again then these had been most likely mud wallets, now, collectively, they’re value about $47M,” Grogan famous.
Ulbricht left jail on Jan. 21, 2025, following a full and unconditional pardon from U.S. President Donald Trump. Maintaining a marketing campaign promise, Trump issued the pardon on his first full day in workplace after being sworn in on Jan. 20.
The U.S. authorities had seized 174,000 BTC from Silk Highway in 2013. Ulbricht, arrested the identical 12 months, was sentenced in 2015 to 2 life sentences plus 40 years on prices together with working a prison enterprise, drug distribution, and cash laundering. Silk Highway had used Bitcoin for transactions on its darknet market.
Whereas authorities shut down Silk Highway and seized vital quantities of Bitcoin, wallets holding comparatively small quantities on the time seem to have been ignored. These wallets, now value thousands and thousands of {dollars} on account of Bitcoin’s appreciation, stay untouched.
One such pockets holds 88.77 BTC, at present valued at over $9.4 million. A few of these wallets additionally comprise airdropped property, equivalent to these from the 2017 Bitcoin Money (BCH) arduous fork.
Regardless of the substantial worth of those wallets at present, Grogan speculated that Ulbricht could not have entry to the non-public keys. In response to issues about publicizing this info, Grogan clarified:
“Not going to share the addresses however all of them are public (cited in trial docs or straight adjoining ) and tracked already by a number of sources.”
