A 'Modern Robin Hood': What It's Like to Rep Someone Who Hands Over $1B in Stolen Bitcoin to the Feds
San Francisco defense attorney Adam Gasner's client, identified in court papers as 'Individual X,' last week handed over a trove of Bitcoin hacked from the long-shuttered online black market Silk Road and walked away a free person.
November 09, 2020 at 07:30 AM
4 minute read
Federal prosecutors in San Francisco on Thursday announced they seized more than $1 billion worth of Bitcoin hacked from the long-shuttered online black market Silk Road.
The cryptocurrency world had already taken note of the massive transfer from what appears to have been the most-watched Bitcoin wallet on the web. Here's the thing about Bitcoin: Since anyone can see the balance and all transactions of any Bitcoin address, there's really no way to keep your status as a Bitcoin billionaire anonymous. So though the Bitcoin address "1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx" had long been dormant, the speculation about it had only grown. With the price of Bitcoin growing exponentially, its holdings had gone from $14 million in value back in 2013 to more than $1 billion on Tuesday when it was transferred to a previously unknown wallet.
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