Latest news with #Ulbricht
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
A $31 million Bitcoin donation to Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht may have come from former ‘darknet' marketplace AlphaBay, according to Chainalysis
Ross Ulbricht, the former founder of the now-defunct drug trafficking site Silk Road, recently received an anonymous donation of 300 Bitcoins, worth around $31 million, according to reporting from WIRED. Following days of speculation, crypto investigation firm Chainalysis believes the donation came from someone associated with the now-defunct website known as AlphaBay, a platform that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) previously called 'the largest marketplace on the Darknet.' 'Chainalysis has reasonable grounds to suspect the funds originated in AlphaBay,' a company spokesperson told Fortune. The news was first reported by WIRED. Chainalysis director of investigations Phil Larratt told that outlet that the number of Bitcoins 'suggest they came from someone who was possibly a vendor on AlphaBay back in the early days.' Ulbricht did not immediately respond to a request for comment made through the Free Ross campaign that advocated for his pardon. AlphaBay, similar to Ulbricht's Silk Road, was an online marketplace that dealt in illegal goods and services like drugs and stolen data. It operated between 2014 to 2017, before resurfacing again from 2021 to 2023. While the Silk Road is known as one of the first drug trafficking sites, AlphaBay is known as one of the largest, with 25 times more listings than the Silk Road, according to the FBI. AlphaBay was taken offline in 2017 after a global law enforcement operation seized the site's servers and arrested its creator, Alexander Cazes. It remains unclear who sent the donation to Ulbricht. It is also unclear why someone would give so much cryptocurrency to Ulbricht. Taylor Monahan, a security researcher at crypto firm MetaMask, told WIRED that people make donations for a number of reasons. 'People donate when they're deeply inspired by someone and/or grateful and/or have some sort of remorse for the situation,' Monahan said. Ulbricht was arrested by the FBI in 2013 and sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted of drug trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering. On Jan. 21, one day after his inauguration, Trump announced that he had pardoned Ulbricht. Ulbricht spent nearly 11 years in prison. 'The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponisation of government against me,' Trump said on Truth Social in January. This story was originally featured on
WIRED
05-06-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Ross Ulbricht Got a $31 Million Donation From a Dark Web Dealer, Crypto Tracers Suspect
Jun 5, 2025 2:50 PM Crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis says the mysterious 300-bitcoin donation to the pardoned Silk Road creator appears to have come from someone associated with a different defunct black market: AlphaBay. Online marketplace Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht speaks at The Bitcoin Conference at The Venetian Convention & Expo Center on May 29, 2025, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photograph:When Ross Ulbricht received a $31 million bitcoin donation last weekend from an unknown source, many observers saw it as more than a very nice welcome-home gift. Rumors swirled that the creator of the Silk Road, less than five months after receiving a pardon from Donald Trump that saved him from a lifetime in prison, was sending himself a trove of his stashed criminal proceeds from his days running the dark web's first black market more than a decade prior. Now cryptocurrency tracing investigators say they've arrived at a stranger explanation: The money wasn't originally Ulbricht's, and didn't come from the Silk Road. Instead, they suspect it came from a different long-defunct dark web black market: AlphaBay. The crypto tracing firm Chainalysis tells WIRED that, based on blockchain analysis, it has tied the origin of the 300 bitcoins sent to Ulbricht on Sunday to someone involved in AlphaBay, a dark web market that sold a wide variety of drugs and cybercriminal contraband from 2014 to 2017 and eventually grew to be 10 times the size of the Silk Road, according to the FBI. Chainalysis says the funds appear to have emerged from AlphaBay around 2016 and 2017. Given the amount of the donation, Chainalysis suggests it might have come from someone who acted as a large-scale seller on the market. 'We have reasonable grounds to suspect that these funds originated in AlphaBay,' says Phil Larratt, Chainalysis's director of investigations and a former official at the UK's National Crime Agency. 'Looking at the amount, that would suggest they came from someone who was possibly a vendor on AlphaBay back in the early days.' WIRED reached out to Ulbricht for comment about the donation's origin via contacts at the Free Ross campaign that lobbied for his pardon, but didn't immediately receive a response. Prior to Chainalysis's finding that the $31 million donation appears to have originated at AlphaBay, the independent crypto tracing investigator known as ZachXBT had already posted to his account on X his own findings that the money didn't appear to have come from the Silk Road. ZachXBT found that, despite the donor's use of multiple Bitcoin 'mixers' that take in users' coins and return others to obfuscate their trail on the blockchain, he was able to trace the funds to an address that had been flagged in Chainalysis's software tool Reactor as tied to illicit activity. That analysis suggested that the money was a 'legitimate donation but not legitimate funds,' ZachXBT wrote in a text message to WIRED. ZachXBT also found that the same individual who controlled the funds had cashed out other cryptocurrency at an exchange in small, distributed quantities rather than in a single sum, suggesting he or she may have been trying to prevent them being seized or flagged—another sign that the money may have come from criminal origins. 'Usage of multiple mixers, spreading out CEX deposits, etc,' ZachXBT writes to WIRED, using the term CEX to mean a centralized exchange, 'that is done typically if you are trying to avoid getting illicit funds frozen.' Chainalysis declined to offer more information on how exactly it identified the funds as originating at AlphaBay. But the company has built a business around identifying illicit services like digital black markets out of the morass of billions of cryptocurrency addresses. Chainalysis' identification of the AlphaBay cluster of bitcoin addresses, in fact, played a key role in the takedown of the market in a law enforcement investigation known as Operation Bayonet that spanned 2016 and 2017. AlphaBay certainly produced plenty of crypto kingpins who would have the kind of eight-figure sum donated to Ulbricht. Before it was torn offline in an elaborate sting operation in July of 2017, the site was facilitating $2 million a day in sales, largely of illegal drugs although it also offered malware, stolen data, and other cybercriminal wares. AlphaBay's creator and administrator, Alexandre Cazes, died in a Bangkok jail cell under mysterious circumstances following his arrest, but the site's second-in-command, who went by the handle Desnake, appears to have remained at large. Any bitcoins an AlphaBay seller or administrator managed to hold onto since the site's closure would have since appreciated more than 40-fold. Exactly why one of AlphaBay's crypto moguls would donate $31 million to Ulbricht, however, remains a mystery. Speculation on social media has ranged from a fellow black marketeer repaying a favor to a more principled gift intended to thank Ulbricht for blazing a trail with his invention of the Silk Road's crypto-enabled anonymous transactions. That gratitude may also take into account that, while many got rich on the dark web markets that Ulbricht pioneered, he instead spent over a decade in prison, speculates Taylor Monahan, a crypto tracer and security researcher at crypto firm MetaMask. 'People donate when they're deeply inspired by someone and/or grateful and/or have some sort of remorse for the situation,' says Monahan. 'Survivor's guilt is wild.'
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ross Ulbricht, The Silk Road Founder Pardoned By Trump Soon After His Inauguration, Receives A Whopping $31 Million Worth Of Bitcoin In Donation Wallet
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. A wallet linked to Ross Ulbricht, the creator of illegal drug marketplace Silk Road, received over $30 million in Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) on Saturday, sparking intrigue among the cryptocurrency community. What Happened: According to on-chain tracker Lookonchain, Ulbricht's donation wallet received a transfer of 300 BTC, approximately $31.47 million. Hours later, the stash was transferred to another wallet, details about which remained unknown as of this writing. A message sent to the Instagram accounts of Ulbricht and his wife by Benzinga did not receive an immediate response. Trending: — no wallets, just price speculation and free paper trading to practice different after, theories and conjectures arose, with observers making various claims. A cryptocurrency commentator called CR1337 said, 'You want to tell me that a single entity donated 300 BTC, more than $30M, to Ross Ulbricht, and that this is not just one of his old wallets and he sent it to himself?'Another user, Execute, meanwhile, invoked the ideas of 'freedom, privacy, and justice' while discussing the massive transfer. Meanwhile, Ulbricht has managed to raise nearly $1.3 million in pledged BTC by auctioning off personal items from before and during his imprisonment through the Bitcoin auction platform Scarce City. The items included his prison ID card, prison notebok and artworks he created while imprisoned. Why It Matters: Ulbricht was pardoned by President Donald Trump earlier this year as part of a campaign promise. Ulbricht was serving a double life sentence since 2013 for creating the darknet website Silk Road—a hub of the illegal trafficking of heroin, cocaine, LSD, and other substances, all paid for in Bitcoin. Shortly after the pardon, wallets belonging to Ulbricht were discovered, containing as many as 430 BTC unmoved for over 13 years. Read Next: New to crypto? Get up to $400 in rewards for successfully completing short educational courses and making your first qualifying trade on Coinbase. A must-have for all crypto enthusiasts: Sign up for the Gemini Credit Card today and earn rewards on Bitcoin Ether, or 60+ other tokens, with every purchase. Photo Courtesy: Paopano on Send To MSN: Send to MSN This article Ross Ulbricht, The Silk Road Founder Pardoned By Trump Soon After His Inauguration, Receives A Whopping $31 Million Worth Of Bitcoin In Donation Wallet originally appeared on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Yes, Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road dark web marketplace
Claim: U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of dark web marketplace Silk Road. Rating: Ross Ulbricht, formerly known online by the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts" (a nod to the novel "The Princess Bride"), is known today as the founder of the Silk Road marketplace, a former site on the dark web notorious for selling illicit drugs, among other products. Since Donald Trump retook office in January 2025, social media users have suggested that the president's hard line immigration policies and rhetoric about migrants being "criminals" or "drug dealers" are hypocritical because on Jan. 21, 2025, his second day back in the White House, Trump issued Ulbricht a full and complete pardon following his arrest and imprisonment in 2013 and 2015, respectively, for drug trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering. For example, one Facebook user shared a meme that claimed the president pardoned Ulbricht and added: "Who's letting criminals and drug dealers loose in our country?" (Facebook user Raymond Wynn) This rumor is indeed true. Trump posted about the pardon on his social media platform, Truth Social, and it was reported by reputable news media outlets like Axios and the BBC. Federal documentation also confirmed the grant of clemency (archived). (Whether the Silk Road sold fentanyl, as claimed in the above meme, is unconfirmed. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] data on drug overdoses suggest that fentanyl did not become prevalent until after Silk Road closed in 2013. But the site was notorious for selling vast swathes of drugs.) Ulbricht created the Silk Road site, accessible only using specific software that could connect to the dark web, in January 2011. He ran its cryptocurrency-based marketplace until October 2013, when it was shut down by federal authorities and he was arrested. The BBC reported that in the two and a half years it was operational, users sold more than $200 million in drugs through the site, which also offered fake IDs and hacking tools. "It's kinda earned the reputation as the eBay of drugs," cybersecurity researcher Brian Krebs reportedly told NPR in 2013, following Ulbricht's arrest. In 2015, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge for drug trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering as part of the Silk Road operations. In a 2015 news release from the Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called Ulbricht "a drug dealer and criminal profiteer who exploited people's addictions and contributed to the deaths of at least six young people." Ulbricht attended Trump's 2025 State of the Union address, according to a post he made on X. — Snopes' archives contributed to this report. Abuse, National Institute on Drug. Drug Overdose Deaths: Facts and Figures | National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). 21 Aug. 2024, Clarke, Amelia. "Yes, Trump Pardoned Creator of 'Silk Road' Dark Web Marketplace, Ross Ulbricht." Snopes, 9 Mar. 2025, ---. "Yes, Trump Pardoned Ross Ulbricht, Creator of 'Silk Road' Dark Web Marketplace." Snopes, 23 Jan. 2025, Dozens of 'Dark Market' Websites Seized as Part of Silk Road 2.0 Investigation | ICE. 6 Nov. 2014, Habeshian, Sareen. "Trump Pardons Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht." Axios, 21 Jan. 2025, Hu, Elise. "The Man Behind The Shadowy Illicit Drug Market, Silk Road." NPR, 3 Oct. 2013. NPR, Neuman, Scott. "FBI Arrests Alleged Owner Of 'Silk Road' Black Market Site." NPR, 2 Oct. 2013. NPR, 'No Safe Harbor for Illegal Immigrant Criminals Under President Trump'. The White House, 14 Apr. 2025, "Silk Road Drug Website Founder Ross Ulbricht Jailed." BBC News, 29 May 2015. 'Silk Road: How FBI Closed in on Suspect Ross Ulbricht'. BBC News, 2 Oct. 2013. 'Trump Pardons Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht'. BBC News, 22 Jan. 2025, U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York. Ross Ulbricht, A/K/A "Dread Pirate Roberts," Sentenced In Manhattan Federal Court To Life In Prison. 29 May 2015,
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Silk Road's Ulbricht receives 300 BTC donation
-- Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, has received a donation of 300 Bitcoin (BTC) from an anonymous source. This donation, tracked by blockchain firm Lookonchain, was sent to Ulbricht's wallet early on Sunday. At the time of the transaction, the donated coins were valued at approximately $31.4 million. The transaction was followed by a transfer of the majority of these coins to the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, as indicated by data from Arkham. This happened within a few hours of the initial donation. Ulbricht, who was pardoned and released from prison by President Donald Trump on January 21, made his first public appearance since his release at the Bitcoin 2025 conference over the weekend. His life sentence was fully and unconditionally pardoned by the former president, following his conviction for creating and operating the Silk Road, a notorious online marketplace for illicit goods. Related articles Silk Road's Ulbricht receives 300 BTC donation Bitcoin price today: dips to $105k as Trump tariff uncertainty spurs profit-taking What's next for Bitcoin? Analysts react to Trump Media's $2.5B Treasury plan Sign in to access your portfolio
