--- title: "Someone Just Moved $1 Billion in Bitcoin From a Busted Darknet Market" description: "An anonymous bitcoin wallet holder transferred $1 billion worth of bitcoin from accounts linked to darknet marketplace Silk Road." date: "2020-11-05" modified: "2020-11-05" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/someone-just-moved-1-billion-in-bitcoin-from-a-busted-darknet-market" categories: - "Bitcoin" - "Blockchain" - "Cryptocurrency" - "Future Society" tags: - "bitcoin" - "cryptocurrency" - "silk road" - "the digest" --- # Someone Just Moved $1 Billion in Bitcoin From a Busted Darknet Market ![An anonymous bitcoin wallet holder transferred $1 billion worth of bitcoin from accounts linked to darknet marketplace Silk Road.]() *\Image: Creative Commons\* ## Big Transfer For the first time in seven years, an anonymous bitcoin wallet holder just transferred $1 billion worth of the digital currency from accounts linked to the seminal but defunct darknet marketplace Silk Road, [*The Guardian* reports](). That's about 70,000 bitcoins, which had mostly been left untouched since April 2013, when an FBI raid [shut down the online marketplace](). Public records — all cryptocurrency records are by design posted on a public ledger — indicate that the massive amount of funds was moved to a new address, with the transaction costing a mere $12 in fees. "Through blockchain analysis we can determine that these funds likely originated from the Silk Road," Tom Robinson, chief scientist at the crypto analyst firm Elliptic, told *The Guardian*. "They left the Silk Road’s wallet back on 6 May 2012 when they were worth around $350,000 and then remained dormant for nearly a year, before being moved... in April 2013," he added. ## Big Own While the FBI got hold of some 174,000 bitcoins during their 2013 raid, another estimated 450,000 bitcoins, worth roughly $6.8 billion at today's rate, are still out there. It's still unclear who's behind the transaction. Robinson said it "seems unlikely" that Ross Ulbricht, the 36-year-old founder of Silk Road who was sentenced to a double life sentence in late 2013, was behind the transfer. Guessing the private key of a bitcoin, a 256-bit number, is virtually impossible as that would take a supercomputer "as many times more than the age of the universe as there have been seconds since the Big Bang," as *The Guardian* reports. However, if the wallet file itself leaked online — and if the password for it is short enough — it'd be feasible for a computer to "brute-force," or try all combinations in quick succession, its way in. **READ MORE:** [Silk Road bitcoins worth $1bn change hands after seven years]() \[*The Guardian*\] **More on bitcoin:** *[The IRS Seized Millions in Terrorists’ Crypto. Congress Has Questions]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()