A cryptocurrency balance of around 69 that has not been moved for several years. 396 Bitcoin has been transferred again for the first time and has caused a stir in the crypto money community. The Bitcoin treasure is currently worth just over a billion US dollars or around 512 million euros – according to the Elliptic analysis service, it was the fourth largest in a single one to date Address of parked Bitcoin balances at all.

A treasure of Dread Pirate Roberts? The money was transferred from the address 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx to a fresh address last Tuesday night. Elliptic boss Tom Robinson assumes that this is money from the holdings of the 2013 darknet drug marketplace Silk Road, which was closed by US law enforcement officers. According to his blog entry, blockchain analyzes showed that a high amount of Bitcoin (at that time worth around 350. 000 US dollars) left the Silk Road wallet in May 2012, and with intermediate stops finally ended up in April 2013 at address 1HQ3…. Apart from a payout of 101 Bitcoin to the Btc-e exchange in the year 2015 there have been no withdrawals from the address since then. Btc-e was closed 2017 on charges of massive money laundering.

Also an analysis of the c’t, read in the article “Bitttrug” in the issue on Friday 24 / 20, suggests a Silk Road background. According to this, a large part of the money comes from the Bitcoin mixer on Silk Road, it may belong to a former trader on the platform. A previously carefully dismantled large fortune was apparently reunited at the address in question, which points to the work of a professional.

Wallet cracked with lost password? Whoever could be behind this huge transaction is being speculated about. It seems unlikely that it could be the US American Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted of Silk Road operator 2015, unless he has the opportunity to carry out Bitcoin transactions in prison .

An encrypted wallet file has been circulating for a long time, which supposedly contains exactly the private key for this address, as reported by the online magazine Vice. Hackers have been trying to decipher them for around two years, wrote Alon Gal, CTO of the security company Under the breach, in a tweet in September. And announced that they would try the file themselves.

Gal and Elliptic boss Robinson speculate that someone might have succeeded and the unknown wallet crackers were now using them. But this not only implies successful brute force cracking of encryption with AES – 256 – CBC and SHA – 512, but above all that it is not a fake file.

But a fake is very likely, like the c ‘ t writes: This wallet file is likely to be the product of a scam that has been used for several years. Fictitious wallets with alleged keys for large balances are offered for sale, for which, unfortunately, the password has unfortunately been lost. Finally, when high prices can no longer be achieved, such files end up on platforms such as AllPrivateKeys, where wallets are sometimes traded for a few euros.

The purpose of changing the parking space remains unclear . From the theft of private keys to one of the notorious Bitcoin whales who are now putting their assets into position for market manipulation in the current crypto boom, anything is possible. Who is exactly behind the huge sum is also open until further notice. The blockchain is silent on this.

(axk)