Almost $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency linked to the notorious online market Silk Road is being transferred, blockchain monitoring group Elliptic disclosed, as reported by Bloomberg.
The transaction is the first movement of bitcoins from the address since 2015 when it transferred 101 bitcoins to BTC-e - a now-dissolved virtual currency exchange allegedly popular among money launderers, reports said.
Around 69,369 bitcoins were transferred from an electronic wallet connected to Silk Road. The illegal darknet marketplace once facilitated the promotion and sale of illicit drugs, stolen credit card information and access to online services like gun-for-hire, Bloomberg reported.
BitInfoCharts said that the transferred digital currency was moved from the online wallet widely believed to be the fourth-richest Bitcoin address in the world. Unscrupulous individuals with access to the wallet could be behind the movement of money, either to convert the bitcoins into cash, or to hide them for safety, if the original account was breached.
According to Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson, he is going to "stick my neck out and suggest that there's a fair chance that these are Ross Ulbricht's bitcoins," Benzinga quoted him as saying.
Ross Ulbricht is an American popularly known for creating and operating Silk Road from 2011 until his arrest in 2013. Silk Road was intended to use the TOR - a free and open-source software that enables anonymous communication - and bitcoin as its main form of currency. Ulbricht is currently serving a life sentence.
Meanwhile, bitcoin was down late Wednesday alongside traditional markets after U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that "fraud" took place in the election and vowed to stop some counting of votes. "This is a fraud on the American public... an embarrassment to our nation," he said.
The world's most popular cryptocurrency was trading at $13,580 as of Wednesday, representing a 3.3% drop on the day.
