FBI seizes $28.5 MILLION IN BITCOINS from SILK ROAD creator
Yeah, the FBI has taken a shit load of money from the head of some international drug market thing. I don’t know if that is ever considered “rote”, but we’ve all heard of it before. But this case is different! How so, I rhetorically ask myself? Because it involves the Dark Internet Web Place drug haven Silk Road, and bitcoins. Yeah, Future! Yeah, Futuristic Drug Busts!
The FBI has seized $28.5 million worth of bitcoins from the alleged mastermind behind the online drug market Silk Road, according to a report from Forbes. An unnamed FBI official reportedly tells Forbes that the agency seized a collection of 144,000 bitcoins that belonged to Ross Ulbricht, who earlier this month was arrested and charged with being the owner of Silk Road. This is reportedly the largest seizure of bitcoin — the semi-anonymous digital currency — ever made, and is said to have been completed earlier today.
Other stashes of bitcoin related to Silk Road may still remain, however. Forbes reports that a separate collection of 111,000 bitcoins — or about $22 million — has been identified as potentially belonging to Ulbricht, but that the FBI appears not to have taken it just yet. That may be because the FBI hasn’t gained the necessary key to unlock it, or simply because the account isn’t under suspicion.
News of the seizure doesn’t appear to have hurt the famously volatile currency at large. When $3 million worth of bitcoins was initially seized following Silk Road’s shutdown, the currency’s price took a brief nosedive before ultimately recovering. But today, the currency is actually performing better than it was back when Silk Road was shut down: a single bitcoin was valued at around $130 then, while a single bitcoin is closer to $185 now.