Hundreds of Bitcoin wallets tied to the defunct Silk Road darknet marketplace have suddenly reactivated, sending about $3.14 million in BTC to a newly created address in their largest move in years.
Blockchain data provider Arkham reports that the transfers came from a cluster of long-dormant wallets and landed in a Bech32 address starting with “bc1q,” whose owner remains unknown.
The transfers mark a sharp break with the pattern of near-total inactivity that has defined these addresses for the past decade. Only a handful of minor “test” transactions had gone out from Silk Road-tagged wallets this year before this week’s sudden burst of on-chain activity.
Inside the $3.14M Bitcoin shift
Arkham’s dashboards show that roughly 300 Silk Road-linked addresses combined their balances in a coordinated series of 100‑plus transactions. Together, they pushed around $3.14 million in Bitcoin to a single destination address, suggesting clear intent to consolidate funds rather than disperse them.
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Despite the fresh movements, most of the tagged holdings remain unmoved. Arkham estimates that Silk Road-associated wallets still control roughly $38–41 million in Bitcoin, while the newly created address holds only the amount received in this latest batch of transfers.
The renewed wallet activity follows the political and legal drama around Ross Ulbricht, who created and operated Silk Road until his arrest and conviction in 2015.
Ulbricht received two life sentences plus additional years for running a marketplace that enabled anonymous trade in illegal drugs and other illicit goods using Bitcoin as the medium of exchange.
In January 2025, President Donald Trump granted Ulbricht a full and unconditional pardon, ending his life sentence after more than a decade behind bars. The decision energized Ulbricht’s supporters and triggered renewed scrutiny of the remaining Silk Road-linked coins, some of which the US government had already seized and auctioned in earlier enforcement actions.
Billions seized, but millions unaccounted
Authorities have previously confiscated large tranches of Bitcoin tied to Silk Road, including tens of thousands of coins that later went to auction under government control. One US government-controlled wallet identified by Arkham holds tens of thousands of BTC from Silk Road seizures, underscoring the scale of the original marketplace’s crypto footprint.
At current prices, those coins would be worth roughly $47 million, sitting alongside other tagged wallets that hold several million dollars more but have seen almost no recent movement apart from a few tiny test transactions.
The latest $3.14 million transfer is small relative to both the historical Silk Road stash and Bitcoin’s daily trading volume, so it does not pose immediate market risk on its own. However, any sign that much larger Silk Road-linked balances might move could quickly capture trader attention, especially if on-chain data points to potential exchange deposits.
