Friday, 6 November 2020

The US government seized $1 billion in bitcoin from dark web marketplace Silk Road

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Earlier this week, the bitcoin community was shocked when a digital wallet containing roughly $1 billion in bitcoin — thought to be proceeds from the now-shuttered dark web drug marketplace Silk Road — was emptied by an unknown individual. Now, those responsible for cleaning out the funds have revealed themselves: it was the US government.

The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it had seized the wallet’s contents as part of a civil forfeiture case targeting the Silk Road. The government said it retrieved the roughly 70,000 bitcoins with the help of an unnamed hacker, whose identity is known to the government but who is simply referred to as “Individual X” in court documents.

“Individual X” allegedly hacked the Silk Road’s...

Continue reading…



source https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/6/21552339/us-goverment-seizes-1-billion-bitcoin-profits-silk-road-wallet-individual-x

No comments:

Post a Comment

Vergecast: Two more iPhones, Apple’s ‘One More Thing’ event

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge We started this week with some reviews of the alternatively-sized iPhone 12s — the mini and the Pro Max...