Bitcoin Donations Are Pouring In for Ross Ulbricht—Who Might Already Be Sitting on $47M in Old Wallets – Decrypt

Following President Donald Trump’s pardon of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht Tuesday, the Bitcoin community has rallied, pouring crypto into Ulbricht’s donation fund at FreeRoss.org. But does he need the money?

Ulbricht could already be sitting on millions in Bitcoin, according to Conor Grogan, a director at the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Grogan noted that around 430 BTC—worth approximately $47 million—awaits untouched in wallets possibly linked to Ulbricht. These wallets have been dormant for over 13 years, he said.

“I found ~430 BTC across dozens of wallets associated with Ross Ulbricht that were not confiscated by the [U.S. government] and have been untouched for 13+ years,” Grogan posted on X. “Back then these were probably dust wallets, now, collectively, they are worth about $47 million,” Grogan continued.

According to Arkham Intelligence data, fourteen Bitcoin addresses linked to the Silk Road collectively hold $47 million in Bitcoin, confirming the figure from Grogan. The cluster of wallets identified as “Silk Road” on Arkham includes the account beginning in “1CQv” that Grogan shared in a screenshot, and which alone holds over $9 million in Bitcoin.

Decrypt has yet to independently confirm that these wallets do, in fact, belong to Ulbricht, or whether these funds have been previously marked for seizure by the U.S. government. At least one wallet included in Arkham’s Silk Road cluster—the account identified as “Silk Road: Individual X (1HQ3G)”—was previously accessed by the U.S. government during a forfeiture procedure in November 2020.

When the Bitcoin in wallet “1HQ3G” was first moved back in 2020, at the time worth over $1 billion, speculation abounded then too that Ulbricht had somehow maintained access and transferred the coins even while behind bars. It was only days later that the U.S. government solved the riddle by announcing it had confiscated the funds from a hacker—identified only as “Individual X”—who had stolen the Bitcoin from a Silk Road account in 2012 or 2013.

If the wallets holding a Bitcoin treasure of more than $47 million belong to the erstwhile Silk Road founder, it’s unknown if he still holds the private keys to any of them. The money could be unretrievable; as much as 20% of the total supply of Bitcoin is believed to be in wallets whose owners lost the keys, died or disappeared, including the wallet of Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, which holds 1.1 million BTC (around $115 billion worth.)

Ulbricht has not given any interviews since his release, nor replied to Grogan on X. Decrypt has reached out to Ulbricht for comment.

Meanwhile, donations have been flowing into Ulbricht since his release from the federal penitentiary on Tuesday. The cryptocurrency exchange Kraken contributed $111,111 to Ulbricht on Wednesday.

According to Arkham Intelligence, his wallet address has received 2.62 BTC, approximately $272,000, which includes the Kraken donation. Another address associated with Ulbricht has collected $4,615 in Ethereum, USDC, Tether (USDT), and Binance Coin (BNB).

“At this rate, he’ll have $1 million in 3 days,” journalist Pete Rizzo said on X.

Even if Ulbricht controls the wallets in question, whether the U.S. government would attempt to confiscate any Silk Road-related money is as yet unknown. Earlier this month, a federal judge authorized the sale of $6.5 billion seized Silk Road Bitcoin. And crypto legal experts tell Decrypt that federal authorities could come after any Silk Road-related Bitcoin.

“If the authorities find assets later that they can link to the original crime(s), they could try to seize these even after release, assuming the statute of limitations has not expired,” Eli Cohen, General Counsel at tokenized asset platform Centrifuge, told Decrypt.

Much of the Bitcoin the United States currently holds is partly due to those seized by the U.S. Department of Justice. Cohen pointed to the 50,676 Bitcoin the IRS seized from another Silk Road hacker, James Zhong, in November 2021. “Normally, for federal crimes, the authorities would have frozen or confiscated any funds they believe are proceeds of the crime, including crypto like Bitcoin,” Cohen said.