Categories: U.S. Regulation

US Government Moves $600 Million in Silk Road Bitcoin to Coinbase

The United States government moved nearly $600 million in seized Bitcoin from the Silk Road dark web marketplace to a Coinbase wallet Wednesday, according to Arkham Intelligence.

The government moved 10,000 Bitcoin, worth nearly $594 million at the time of transaction, to a wallet tied to Coinbase Prime. It’s not immediately clear whether the United States plans to sell or custody the assets. The transaction follows a previous move of approximately $2 billion worth of Silk Road Bitcoin in late July.

Such large shifts of cryptocy tend to pique investors’ interest—and sometimes even scare them—as they speculate on what may happen next to the asset. 

But last month, the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) awarded Coinbase Prime a contract to manage and dispose of its large-cap cryptocy assets. The U.S. government may therefore just be moving the seized assets to a new place of custody. 

Silk Road was an Internet marketplace that allowed users to—via the anonymous Tor network—buy goods like illegal drugs. Its customers used cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to buy products but authorities shut the website down in 2014 and seized the digital assets the platform had received. U.S. authorities have sold chunks of the seized Bitcoin over the years.
Terron Gold

Recent Posts

Nasdaq Bets $100 Million on Kraken Parent Payward to Put Wall Street Stocks Onchain

Nasdaq is deepening its push into tokenized markets with a $100 million investment in Payward,…

5 days ago

MoneyGram Turns Stablecoins Into Everyday Money With New Mastercard

MoneyGram is pushing stablecoins beyond crypto trading and remittances with a new payment card designed…

5 days ago

Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP Memecoin Crashes 98% Within an Hour After Wild $1.6 Billion Debut

Hunter Biden’s newly launched LAPTOP memecoin delivered exactly the kind of chaos critics warned about…

6 days ago

Jack Dorsey’s Block Wants a Federal Bank Charter for Bitcoin and Stablecoin Custody

Jack Dorsey's Block is making another major move into regulated finance, applying to create a…

7 days ago

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok Go Down in Rare Simultaneous AI Outage

Some of the world's biggest AI platforms experienced overlapping service disruptions on Thursday, September 3,…

2 weeks ago

U.S. Government Puts GDP and Inflation Data Onchain With Chainlink

Official U.S. economic data is moving directly onto public blockchains. The U.S. Department of Commerce…

2 weeks ago