The rise and fall of Silk Road, the online deep web marketplace is well known to almost everyone in the bitcoin community and beyond. Silk Road was known selling illegal drugs and other commodities on the deep web, where people using the platform could purchase with bitcoin only. Silk Road had a very brief but highly stint for two years before it was shut down by the United States federal authorities.
The creator of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht was arrested and later sentenced to prison earlier this year by a federal court. While investigating Silk Road, federal agents from US Federal Bureau of Investigation and US Secret Service confiscated a large number of bitcoins from both Silk Road’s bitcoin wallets and Ross Ulbricht’s personal possession. A raid on his home alone led to the discovery and seizure of over 44,000 bitcoins stored in one of his hard drives. These bitcoins are now worth over $11 million and the US Marshal Service will soon be auctioning these 44341 bitcoins. The auction is part of Ross Ulbricht’s sentencing, where he agreed for all his bitcoin stash to be auctioned.
The auction will be held over a period of two weeks starting from October 19 till November 2. According to reports, those interested in participating in the auction would have to pay a deposit of $100000 before participating in the auction. This is not the first time bitcoins from Silk Road investigation is being auctioned as the US Marshals have already held a couple of auctions in the past. All proceeds from these auctions have to be held in an account as per the court directives until the ownership of such proceeds are determined.
In its limited lifespan of about 2 years, Silk Road had clocked over $214 million in sales. Soon after Silk Road was taken down, Silk Road 2.0 took its place, which was also closed by the FBI in 2013. Silk Road 2.0 has been replaced by Silk Road 3.0, which is still operational.