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Billionaire Hacker Takedown


The US Justice Department says it’s seized over $1 billion in bitcoin allegedly stolen by a hacker from Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht before his arrest for running the dark-web marketplace for illegal goods and services. That makes this the largest seizure of cryptocurrency to date.

As staggering as this amount sounds, the billion dollars was spare change, pilfered away by another hacker in Ulbricht’s group, known only as Individual X. X siphoned off just over 70,000 Bitcoin, which sounds like a lot but pales in comparison to what the Silk Road hauled in while in operation between 2011 and 2015, which was around 9.5 million bitcoin. At today’s exchange rate, 9.5 million bitcoin is worth around $179 billion. With such staggering amounts, no wonder Ulbricht is in prison. The US Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department investigators were able to track down and connect Individual X to the stolen Silk Road cryptocurrency even though it’s been years since Ross Ulbright’s arrest. It turns out that cybercrime doesn’t pay.

I’m Attila from Cylanda, stay safe out there.

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