The FBI’s Silk Road Bitcoin is now worth $6.4 billion
The leading cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin (BTC) has made impressive strides when it comes to adoption. Whereas in 2024, BTC is available via exchange-traded funds (ETFs), serves as a store of value and hedge against inflation, and enjoys widespread mainstream popularity, in the last decade, it was quite obscure. Though unsavory, Bitcoin’s utility as a means of transfer for nefarious purposes is well-documented. This fact has been used (with little success) as an argument against the pioneering digital asset — but BTC has, in fact, been used for everything from the international drug trade to contract killings. A major blow against such unethical and illegal uses was made on November 3, 2020, when the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) unit seized 69,370 Bitcoins associated with the dark web marketplace Silk Road. As an interesting aside, one of the IRS agents presiding over the case was Tigran Gamba...