A Report On Who 'Individual X' Is And All About The Seized Stash Of Silk Road Bitcoins Worth $1 Billion

Where Did The Bitcoins Go? 

The cryptocurrency community noticed that one of the largest addresses holding 69,369 bitcoins from the Silk Road was transferred on November 3, 2020. The US government revealed it had seized the coins from a person they dubbed “Individual X” following the on-chain movement. On what we know about the Silk Road bitcoin address that was seized by US law enforcement, the following is an in-depth look.

American law enforcement officials seized 69,369 bitcoins worth over $1 billion today this week on election day in the US. As reported on the address on September 11, 2020, the bitcoin address is a well-known address. As hackers have been trying to sell an alleged encrypted wallet dat file during the last two years, the reason is why they looked into the address. 

Here it was found that the bitcoin address was called “1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx” or “1HQ3” for short, stemming from what is the Silk Road according to blockchain analysis.

1HQ3 got 69,471 BTC sent to the address on April 9, 2019, according to on-chain data. As many of the funds stemmed from the SR bitcoin address “1BBq”, the funds came from the Silk Road marketplace. 

Only one large transfer was sent between April 2013 and up until the day the address was seized. After that, the wallet only contained 69,369 BTC as 101 BTC over $1.5 M was sent to the now-defunct Btc-e exchange 

Seeking forfeiture with the courts, reports show that federal law enforcement seized the funds on November 3. As prosecutors call the person Individual X as they describe obtaining the BTC from a hacker. People are uncertain about this person’s true identity as the person the government calls Individual X is still a mystery to this day. 

According To Investors 

The Internal Revenue Service was involved with the procedure as however, the court filing explains. To analyse bitcoin transactions executed by Silk Road, law enforcement officials also hired third party blockchain analysis, investigators. 

It was happening that court filings then details that they have observed 54 transactions that were sent from bitcoin addresses controlled by Silk Road, two bitcoin addresses totalling 70,411.46 BTC valued at approximately $ 354,000 at the time of transfer from this review.  

The attorney for United States David L. Anderson then wrote that Individual X was the individual who moved the cryptocurrency from Silk Road according to an investigation conducted by the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service as also the US Attorney’s Office coming for the Northern District of California. 

Further adding, Anderson says: 

Now as Individual X had signed a Consent and the Agreement to Forfeiture with the US Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California which was on November 3, 2020. It was found that Individual X consented to the forfeiture of the Defendant Property to the United States Government in that agreement. The United States took custody of the Defendant Property from 1HQ3 on November 3, 2020. 

Two years later, the alleged Russian operator Alexander Vinnik was indicted for running an unlicensed money transmitting business and money laundering as the filing also notes that after the 101 BTC was sent to BTC-e in 2015. 

There are also the last two years of hackers attempting to crack the wallet as a number of bitcoiners assume this is how the prior owner of address 1HQ3 was caught. A great number of cryptic messages have been sent to the address as well after the wallet saw the first transfer in 2013 with 69,471 BTC sent. 

So that someone can broadcast it to an address of their preference, for instance, crypto advocates can leverage tools like note4ever.com which encodes any message into a list of bitcoin addresses. They would see a number of colourful messages if someone was to inspect the transactions involved with address 1HQ3. 

What More Is Found In The Seized Bitcoins? 

Messages with addresses like “1BitcoinForPresident42o7777DKkJij” and 1FreeRossF*ckCops77777777777W87XM could be seen on any blockchain explorer even after the federal agents seized the 69,369 bitcoins. Some people have tried to communicate with the owner as a great number of messages were sent to 1HQ3 over the years. 

Claiming to sell an encrypted dat file belonging to the 1HQ3 bitcoin address, this leads to the massive amount of advertisements over the last two years. Tweeting about the address recently was Alon Gal, the Chief Technology Officer of cybercrime firm Hudson Rock. Tethered to the address as well making it very popular was also Google that has approximately 16,700 links. 

The wallet dat file was seen on marketplace websites like Satoshidisk.com and All Private Keys before the feds seizing the coins from the so-called Individual X. One site was selling the file for 0.08929505 BTC or $1,050 that was the exchange rate at that time when reporting the attempted sales. 

The Conclusion 

More clues are currently unravelling and may be published in the future as the 1HQ3 address may be a mystery today. 444,000 BTC is considered still missing from the marketplace’s coffers, as so far this case has revealed were $ 1 billion worth of the old Silk Road bitcoins went. The missing 444k SR BTC is worth more than $6.8 billion today using today’s exchange rate. 

As they have done many times in the past it will also be quite interesting to see whether or not the US government decides to auction the 69k bitcoin stash.