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Someone has withdrawn ~$1 billion from a bitcoin wallet dormant since 2015 (Wallet likely tied to the dark web silkroad)

SilentPanda

SilentPanda

Member
Nov 6, 2017
13,721
Earth
Nearly $1 billion in bitcoin has been emptied from a mysterious wallet that has been dormant since 2015.

The haul of slightly more than 69,369 BTC—worth about $975 million at the time this post went live—was withdrawn in the past 24 hours, the bitcoin ledger shows. Alon Gal, co-founder and CTO of security firm Hudson Rock, was among the first—if not the first—to report the transaction.
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om Robinson, co-founder and chief scientist of blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, said on Twitter that the bitcoin wallet is the world's fourth largest. He said he believed the funds came from sales on Silk Road, the underground market that peddled drugs, murder-for-hire, and other illicit goods and services before being brought down in 2013.
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The person or party who withdrew the windfall remains a mystery. It's possible that it was either someone connected to Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht or one of the many sellers who used the online crime bazar.
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For the moment, the quasi-anonymous nature of bitcoin transactions is concealing the identity of the person or party who withdrew almost $1 billion worth of digital currency. Given the interest of law enforcement and the advances made in cryptocurrency forensics, you can bet people are working hard to solve this mystery.
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arstechnica.com

Someone has transferred ~$1 billion from a bitcoin wallet quiet since 2015

Wallet is likely tied to Silk Road, the underground crime bazaar shut down in 2013.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
 
Kingpin Rogers

Kingpin Rogers

HILF
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
7,459
Reminds me of that guy who dumped his hardrive full of bitcoin when it wasn't worth much and then went looking in the trash for it when it became valuable. Maybe he found it haha.
 
Betty

Betty

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
17,604
Just someone making sure they have enough in their account so their next gen console orders don't get cancelled.
 
Bunzy

Bunzy

Banned
Nov 1, 2018
2,205
Kingpin Rogers said:
Reminds me of that guy who dumped his hardrive full of bitcoin when it wasn't worth much and then went looking in the trash for it when it became valuable. Maybe he found it haha.
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That sounds like my worst nightmare, could you imagine realizing you had millions of dollars that you tossed away
 
Fjordson

Fjordson

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,010
It was Variety Jones!

This takes me back to when I was consumed for a few months by the Silk Road story and Ulbricht's trial.

All of it was fascinating. I remember even reading all the tor chat logs that investigators had from Ross's laptop.
 
HStallion

HStallion

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
62,262
Carmen Sandiego of course.

8auK.gif
 
MrRob

MrRob

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
6,671
Wow that's incredible. Very interested to see where this goes. Should be a true test of the supposedly anonymous nature of the blockchain
 
Parch

Parch

Member
Nov 6, 2017
7,980
It could be from silk road, or it could be from the Mt. Gox hack. I doubt authorities will ever be able to link the source if the individual remains anonymous.
 
Croc Man

Croc Man

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,546
So we just need to look for a shady individual who feasibly has the resources to amass this much money and has had recently had a change of circumstances that may have prompted them to withdraw it.
 

Deleted member 75819

User requested account closure
Banned
Jul 22, 2020
1,520
I remember buying some BTC many many years ago and then forgetting the wallet. I wonder how much money I lost out on...
 
Parch

Parch

Member
Nov 6, 2017
7,980
Even if acquired legally, there can't be that many people in the world who have accumulated 69,369 BTC. Because it's such a large amount cashed out all at once, it narrows the possibilities. Selling it in chunks would have been a lot more discreet.
 

Deleted member 2533

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
8,325
Ashhong said:
Can they track the person down? I thought the whole point was anonymity
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Sort of. If you want to turn a BTC into goods or currency, you have to exchange it, subjecting yourself to identification in some way.

Parch said:
Even if acquired legally, there can't be that many people in the world who have accumulated 69,369 BTC. Because it's such a large amount cashed out all at once, it narrows the possibilities. Selling it in chunks would have been a lot more discreet.
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Yeah, but the chunks are still tracked.

If this person only withdrew .01 BTC it would have been immediately noticed as well, because it's from a famously large and inactive wallet.
 
schwupp

schwupp

Member
Oct 27, 2017
30
Does this mean that all the coins were sold as well? If so, why is there no impact on BTC-$ exchange rate?
 
Slayven

Slayven

Never read a comic in his life
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
93,112
What happened to the bitcoins wallet that was locked and the dude died living no body?
 
Mocha

Mocha

Member
Dec 9, 2017
929
Where can you even put that much money, that's going to be tax up the ass if it goes to an account.

Maybe it was split up to different stocks?
 
Hockeymac18

Hockeymac18

Member
Nov 14, 2017
832
MrRob said:
Wow that's incredible. Very interested to see where this goes. Should be a true test of the supposedly anonymous nature of the blockchain
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Very few things are truly anonymous. Even if the blockchain doesn't allow for deconvolution, there are other methods to figure things out.

I deal with patient-level data in my biotech job, and we try our hardest to anonymize patient data. It's nearly impossible to fully anonymize it, though, because there is always some mechanism (usually illegal, mind you) to put the puzzle together and identify that person (or get really close). Of course, patient/clinical data isn't blockchain, but it's a general comment on the realities of how anonymous data (particularly multiple types of data taken in aggregate) can really be made.
 
big_z

big_z

Member
Nov 2, 2017
7,797
Couldn't this be from a Chinese coin farm? I always figured the person who came up with bitcoin is also sitting on a mass amount of coins purposely set aside.
 
B4mv

B4mv

Member
Nov 2, 2017
3,056
How exactly does one just withdrawl 1B. Like where does it go. How does a transfer like that even happen without like 8 levels of authorization
 
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