Over 300 dormant wallets linked to Silk Road transferred $3 million in Bitcoin after a decade of inactivity, while retaining $40 million across addresses potentially connected to pardoned founder Ross Ulbricht.
Coinbase Director of Product Strategy and Business Operations, Conor Grogan, has identified fresh Bitcoin transactions worth approximately $3 million emerging from Silk Road-linked wallets. Grogan flagged the transactions after a crypto market observer highlighted an interesting series of transactions involving significant BTC volumes.
According to Grogan, the highlighted transactions involved Bitcoin wallets comprising a set of addresses he previously identified and associated with Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the darknet market Silk Road. Grogan found approximately 430 BTC across dozens of crypto wallets, which he suspected were among those not confiscated by the U.S. government after Ulbricht’s arrest over a decade ago.
After finding the wallets in January 2025, Grogan noted that they contained Bitcoins worth approximately $47 million. However, he stated that they could have been worth a lot less over the years, considering Bitcoin’s price from 13 years ago, when Ulbricht faced legal challenges and imprisonment by the government.
Grogan, who believed the assets belonged to Ulbricht, publicly welcomed the creator back after a Presidential pardon while displaying a particular Bitcoin wallet holding 89.77 BTC.
Nearly one year later, activity has resumed on the Silk Road-linked wallets amid relatively low volatility in the Bitcoin market. During the same period, Lookonchain, a blockchain analysis platform, identified another significant transaction involving SpaceX. According to Lookonchain, a crypto wallet linked to the American aerospace manufacturer transferred 1,021 BTC, equivalent to $94.48 million, to Coinbase Prime for custody.
Crypto analysts are now watching the possible impact of these transactions, considering their timing and the current nature of the cryptocurrency market. With 2025 coming to an end and Bitcoin’s abysmal performance in the final quarter of the year, users believe transactions of such magnitude could represent early signals of what is to come.
Bitcoin traded for $92,240 at the time of writing, according to data from TradingView. The pioneer cryptocurrency rebounded from a $87,744 weekend low to reflect a 5.11% rally as of Wednesday morning.
