DOJ Hasn't Actually Found Silk Road Founder's Bitcoin Yet

Techdirt has an interesting followup on the arrest and indictment of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, in connection to which the FBI seized 26,000 or so Bitcoins. From the Techdirt piece: "However, in the criminal complaint against Ulbricht, it suggested that his commissions were in the range of $80 million -- or about 600,000 Bitcoins. You might notice the disconnect between the 26,000 Bitcoins seized and the supposed 600,000 Ulbright made. It now comes out that those 26,000 Bitcoins aren't even Ulbricht's. Instead, they're actually from Silk Road's users. In other words, these were Bitcoins stored with user accounts on Silk Road. Ulbricht's actual wallet is separate from that, and was apparently encrypted, so it would appear that the FBI does not have them, nor does it have any way of getting at them just yet. And given that some courts have argued you can't be forced to give up your encryption, as it's a 5th Amendment violation, those Bitcoins could remain hidden -- though, I could see the court ordering him to pay the dollar equivalent in restitution (though still not sure that would force him to decrypt the Bitcoins)." The article also notes that the FBI's own Bitcoin wallet has been identified, leading to some snarky micropayment messages headed their direction.

Comments

Re:Disappearing Bitcoins

[ThatAblaze]

That's easy: The value of each bitcoin in circulation increases.

Re:Money for his defense

[philip.paradis]

I believe you lack adequate information on how Bitcoin works. If he or someone he trusts and gave instructions to beforehand has access to another copy of the wallet, it's just as good as the original, and the coins may be transferred elsewhere and converted to other currencies, etc via the normal exchanges. I'll be surprised if the prosecuting authorities manage to figure out how to track that; they certainly won't be able to stop it. If by some chance they manage to gain access to the encrypted keys that protect the wallet in their possession, it almost certainly won't be of any value (to them) by then.