As per recent reports, 10.298 BTC coins, related to the now closed dark web internet marketplace Silk Road, are transferred on-chain from the address “bc1qzd8” to another wallet. While another 1490 BTCs are reported to be sent to the change address, CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju argued that the US government (USG) is not the owner of the crypto wallet bc1qzd8, terming it to be a label error.
The CEO of the community-driven analytics platform CryptoQuant quoted several tweets by the blockchain deanonymizing firm Arkham Intel, alleging that the said BTC is sent by the crypto exchange Coinbase via bc1qzd8. Ki Young Ju tweeted:
So you think there's still 1.4k BTC in the new US gov wallet? How do you know that bc1qzd8 is not Coinbase's hot/cold wallet? I think it's just Coinbase sent the seized user deposit(10.298 BTC) from their hot or cold wallet.
— Ki Young Ju (@ki_young_ju) June 20, 2023
The BTC tokens in question were seized by the United States (US) Department of Justice (DoJ). Notably, Arkham Intel posted a comprehensive tweet on June 21, quote-tweeting Ju where the latter maintained that bc1qzd8 is not owned by the USG. Arkham detailed the BTC transfer by bc1qzd8 via an exchange deposit wallet and referred to the DoJ announcement pertaining to the BTC thief James Zhong’s forfeitures.
The DOJ enforcement announcement cites various forfeitures associated with James Zhong, and has very specific bitcoin amounts seized, specified to 8 decimal places, images attached below.
Arkham Intel further asserted that at 7:36 pm on June 21, a fresh exchange deposit address received 10.298 BTC from bc1qzd8. The same address is reported to have been used by bc1qzd8 to receive 115.025 BTC. Further, that same fresh exchange deposit address is also claimed by Arkham to have received 4.574 BTC. The crypto entrepreneur Ki Young Ju was quick to reply to Arkham’s tweet, asking if Arkham believed “1.4k BTC” is still in the USG wallet.
