BTC hovers around $22k, US Silk Road BTC address awakens
As of March 8, the price of bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $22,000, with a trading volume of $30.34 billion over the past 24 hours.
BTC has experienced a decline of 1.41% in the last 24 hours and 4.58% in the last 7 days. Its market cap currently lies at the $426.19 billion mark, with a circulating supply of 19 million BTC.
However, the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization are mainly in the red. Some of the tokens that are falling are OKB which is down by 13.6%, DOGE is down by 3.31%, and MATIC is falling by 2.88%.
The total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is currently at $1.07 trillion, representing a decrease of 1.62%.
Additionally, bitcoin’s dominance in the market is at 39.82%, a decrease of 0.19%, with top gainers like quantstamp (QSP), voyager token (VGX), and alpaca finance (ALPACA) showing impressive performance above 20%.
Approximately $1 billion worth of bitcoins moved from U.S. government-seized wallets
PeckShieldAlert reported that approximately $1 billion worth of bitcoins, equating to around 50,000 bitcoins, have been moved from wallets linked to US Government law enforcement seizures.
On March 8, more than 50,000 BTC worth $1 billion were transferred from various wallets associated with US Government law enforcement seizures to new addresses. Some of these funds were moved to Coinbase.
According to PeckShield, an on-chain analytics firm, three transfers were made from wallets that held approximately 51,000 BTC seized from the Silk Road marketplace in November 2021. The confiscated BTC was consolidated into two wallet addresses.
According to PeckShield, Coinbase, one of the major recipients, received 9,800 bitcoins worth $217 million. The remaining 39,200 bitcoins were sent to two other wallets: bc1qf2…fsv (30,000 bitcoins) and bc1qe7…rdg (9,000 bitcoins), which are suspected to be associated with the Silk Road marketplace.
The Silk Road was a notorious darknet market, established in 2011 by its American founder Ross Ulbricht, operating under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts.”
The platform was infamous for facilitating the sale of illegal goods and services online and was one of the earliest adopters of bitcoin (BTC) as a payment method, contributing to the cryptocurrency’s early rise in popularity.
Following Ulbricht’s arrest, U.S. law enforcement agencies seized a substantial amount of BTC from him, which has since been periodically auctioned off.
While only a fraction of the 50,000 BTC was transferred to Coinbase, moving such a significant amount of BTC from wallets associated with U.S. law enforcement seizures generated various reactions on Twitter.
Some users speculate that if the U.S. agencies decided to sell their Silk Road BTC holdings, it could create substantial selling pressure on the market. Others raised questions regarding the timing of the transfer.
In 2014, Tim Draper, a prominent bitcoin advocate, purchased approximately 30,000 BTC from one of the auctions held by the U.S. Marshals Service. In October 2015, the agency conducted another auction for 50,000 BTC, which included 21 blocks of 2,000 BTC and one block of 2,341 BTC, all sold via an online auction.
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