FBI Could End Up with 5 Percent of All Bitcoins

Thanks to Silk Road Seizure

When the FBI arrested Silk Road boss Ross William Ulbricht and took his site down, they seized the site's assets which were primarily the currency of choice on the anonymous online drug bazaar: Bitcoins. A whole lot of Bitcoins.

In the criminal complaint against Ulbricht, the FBI said that the Silk Road had total sales of over 9.5 million Bitcoins, collecting a revenue of 600,000 of the digital coin. (Given the current price — $140/Bitcoin — that's $1.2 billion in sales and $80 million in commissions.)

The FBI initially seized over 26,000 Bitcoins. I asked the FBI spokesperson what the plan is for those cryptocoins. "We will download the Bitcoin and store them," she said. "We will hold them until the judicial process is over."

Comments

[SweatingGin]

Right now there are about 11.7 million bitcoins. 9.5 million might have gone through Silk Road, but the 26k they got is all they'll get.

I said it on the PM links, but it's appropriate here to. These are the bitcoins seized from silkroad.

It's being used as a message board. Send a small amount of bitcoins to it (.001 or less for most of them) and put a message up for all the people who look for the silk road hoard to see. Some of them are pretty fun.

Also makes it fun if the FBI ever decides they have to dispose of it. I'm sure there is no precedent for more money being sent to a seized account. Nice little wrench in the works for them.

[John Galt]

Gin is valuable medicine.