Thousands of Bitcoin seized from Silk Road by U.S. authorities are now on the move. One BTC is currently worth just under $28k.
Arkham Intelligence claimed that within three hours of one another, the wallet bc1qzd8 transferred 10.298 BTC to what they think to be an exchange deposit wallet that has only ever been used by known Zhong confiscation addresses.
The only other addresses to use it sent the amounts associated with the USG forfeiture.
Shortly thereafter, the very same exchange deposit address used by bc1qzd8 also received 115.025 BTC—the exact amount cited in the DOJ announcement, from an address that received, said funds on April 28, 2022, the exact date referenced in the announcement.
Then, on June 8, 2022, an address that is also mentioned in the statement received 4.574 BTC, another precise amount, from it, the platform added.
Arkham also shared a screenshot from the then DOJ enforcement announcement that had “very specific bitcoin amounts seized, specified to 8 decimal places.”
“We believe this association is strong enough to attribute bc1qzd as an additional USG-related wallet.”
However, Cryptoquant CEO Ki Young Ju cast doubts over the speculation and stated that “bc1qzd8…” is not owned by the US government, and it is likely to be a label error.
“The address ‘bc1qzd8…’ is not owned by the US government and is not clustered/adjacent to any addresses on US government filings.”
Experts Allay Fear Over Silk Road BTC Dumping
He also said that transaction patterns seem to be exchange wallets, not the US gov. The ‘dust” BTC was moved to hot wallets following the seizure of coins from Silk Road.
According to Julio Moreno, another analyst, most of the confiscated 1,500 BTC tokens were simply moved to a new address, so there was no selling pressure. “This is why the Bitcoin price did not care. Gov still has 204K BTC to sell.”
In November 2021, Law enforcement seized over 50,676 Bitcoin hidden in devices from defendant James Zhong’s home.
After illegally receiving over 50,000 Bitcoin from the Silk Road dark web internet marketplace, Zhong pled guilty to committing wire fraud in September 2012.
The amount captured was the second-biggest financial seizure in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice.
