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On November 3, 2020, the cryptocurrency community noted that one of the largest addresses holding 69,369 bitcoins from the Silk Road was transferred. Following the onchain movement, the US government revealed that it seized the coins from a person they dubbed “Individual X”. The following is an in-depth look at what we know about the Silk Road bitcoin address that was seized by US law enforcement.
This week, on election day in the United States, US law enforcement seized 69,369 bitcoins worth over $ 1 billion today. The bitcoin address is a well-known address and news.Bitcoin.com reported on the address on September 11, 2020. The reason our editorial team looked into the address is because hackers tried to sell an alleged dat file of the wallet encrypted during the last two years.
The bitcoin address called “1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx” or “1HQ3” for short, was derived from the Silk Road according to blockchain analysis. According to onchain data, 1HQ3 received 69,471 BTC sent to the address on April 9, 2013. The funds came from the Silk Road (SR) market and many of the funds came from the bitcoin SR address “1BBq”.
Individual X managed to breach nearly $ 1 billion from Silk Road’s old Bitcoin accounts.
Then the government found Individual X and took back Bitcoin, the DOJ announced today.
Who is individual X? pic.twitter.com/N0Rra8EqOR
– Nathaniel Popper (@nathanielpopper) November 5, 2020
Between April 2013 and up to the day the address was seized, only one large wire transfer was sent. 101 BTC (over $ 1.5 million) was sent to the now defunct Btc-e exchange and thereafter the wallet contained only 69,369 BTC.
Reports show that federal law enforcement seized the funds on November 3 and are seeking confiscation in the courts. They describe getting BTC from a “hacker” and prosecutors refer to the person as “Individual X”. The person the government calls Individual X is still a mystery to this day and people are uncertain about this person’s true identity.
However, the court filing explains that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was involved in the procedure. Law enforcement officials have also hired third-party blockchain analytics investigators to analyze the bitcoin transactions performed by Silk Road.
“From this review, they observed 54 transactions sent from Silk Road-controlled bitcoin addresses, two bitcoin addresses totaling 70,411.46 BTC (worth approximately $ 354,000 at the time of the transfer),” the court filing details.
“According to an investigation conducted by the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service and the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, Individual X was the individual who moved the cryptocurrency from Silk Road,” US attorney David L. Anderson wrote.
Anderson further added:
On November 3, 2020, Individual X signed a consent and confiscation agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California. In this agreement, individual X, consented to the confiscation of the defendant property from the United States government. On November 3, 2020, the United States took the defendant property from 1HQ3 into custody.
The filing also notes that after 101 BTC was sent to BTC-e in 2015, two years later alleged Russian operator Alexander Vinnik was indicted for operating an unlicensed money transmission business and for money laundering. money.
I was just thinking 🤔 $ 975 million in unauthorized and illegally hacked and stolen bitcoins by “individual x” who then signed a confiscation agreement at the @USAttorneys and delivered those funds to @usgov ….
??? #stimuluspackage ??? @TFoegelle @AustinSchuck– Rene’e & Shadow 🤘❤️✌️ (@shadownrenee) November 6, 2020
A number of bitcoiners assume that this is how the previous owner of the address 1HQ3 was captured, but there are also the last two years of hackers attempting to crack the wallet. After the wallet saw the first transfer in 2013 with 69,471 BTC sent, a large number of cryptic messages were also sent to the address.
For example, cryptographic advocates can take advantage of tools like note4ever.com, which encodes any message into a list of Bitcoin Cash addresses so someone can relay it to an address of their choice. If someone were to inspect the transactions involved with the address 1HQ3, they would see a series of colored messages.
Even after federal agents seized the 69,369 bitcoins, messages with addresses like “1BitcoinForPresident42o7777DKkJij” and 1FreeRossF * ckCops77777777777W87XM can be seen on any blockchain explorer. Over the years, tons of messages have been sent to 1HQ3 and some people have certainly tried to communicate with the owner.
This leads to the massive amount of advertising in the past couple of years that have claimed to be selling an encrypted dat file belonging to the bitcoin address 1HQ3. For example, Alon Gal, the Chief Technology Officer of the cybercrime firm Hudson Rock tweeted on the address recently. Google also has around 16,700 links related to the address which makes it very popular.
Before the Feds seized the coins from the so-called Individual X, the wallet’s dat file was seen on market websites such as Satoshidisk.com and All Private Keys. When news.Bitcoin.com reported the sell attempt, one site was selling the file for 0.08929505 BTC or $ 1.050, which was the exchange rate at the time.
The address 1HQ3 may be a mystery today, but other clues are unraveling and may be published in the future. So far, this case has revealed where $ 1 billion of old Silk Road bitcoins went, but 444,000 BTC is still considered missing from the market. Using today’s exchange rate, the missing 444k SR BTC is now worth more than $ 6.8 billion.
It will also be quite interesting to see whether or not the US government decides to auction off the 69k bitcoin stash, as they have done many times in the past.
What do you think of Individual X’s controlled bitcoin stash? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Blockchair, Elliptic, Twitter,
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