Online black market Silk Road was shut down by the FBI and the alleged owner Ross William Ulbricht arrested. Along with the shut-down, about 26,000 Bitcoins were seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Those Bitcoins are now at the centre of fierce storm. Even while the FBI decides what it wishes to do with the horde of online currency, supporters of the black-mart are trolling the FBI online. According to a report by Forbes, the FBI is sitting on a neat little pile of Bitcoins garnered from the raid. According to an FBI Spokesperson, the Bureau seized about 26,000 Bitcoins from Silk Road accounts. Essentially, this is currency that belongs to Silk Road users and is not Ulbricht’s personal money.
The haul has put FBI in the line of fire
Even so, with one Bitcoin costing approximately $140, the FBI is sitting on a small mine of currency. The Spokesperson said that the Bureau intends to download the Bitcoin and hold onto them till the process is over. While it’s still not sure, the FBI might just end up liquidating the currency. It is also hoping to catch hold of Ulbricht’s personal Bitcoin account which will be approximately worth $80 million. Translated to Bitcoins, that is close to 600,000 of them, 5 percent of all Bitcoins currently in existence. Now, you cannot just sit on a pile of digital currency without anyone finding out. That’s exactly what is happening to the FBI currently and it is not a pretty picture. Thanks to the transparency of Bitcoin block chain, the FBI’s Bitcoin Wallet was identified by the ingenious folk over at Reddit. The address has now been edited to read “Silkroad Seized Coins” and is seeing an influx of really tiny amounts with “snarky” messages, reveals ZDNet.
One of the funny notes received by the FBI
The account is seeing amounts of about 0.00000001 BTC being added to it. The notes added to the wallet are even more interesting. "Prohibition doesn't work. Stop ruining peoples' lives," says one while another reads "You cannot arrest an idea.”. Then there are some genuinely awesome ones that read, "Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. -Abraham Lincoln,” and “Who are you talking to right now? No, you clearly don't know who you're talking to, so let me clue you in. I am not in danger. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!"Of course the Internet is mad on learning that the Bitcoin seized in the initial haul did not even belong to Ulbricht but Silk Road users. The Bitcoin territory is admittedly a new one for the FBI too. It’s to be seen how the Bureau reacts to the anger directed towards it.
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