Hmm, what was this guy doing with that amount of money?
CSD investigators have claimed that Mr. Medvedev was trading illegal products online in exchange for bitcoin.
You don't make 800 millions selling "products", only if those products are credits cards but even so...probably most of those bitcoins where acquired when BTC was below 1000, and even in this case...80 millions?
The entire SR bust was 10 times below that.
well, the darknet markets eclipse SR in size now. alphabay alone was 10 times the size of silk road, and that was last year. in spite of the continued heat, the darknet markets still seem to be booming. i think XMR has picked up a lot of traffic as well, making it tough to gauge the overall size of the markets.
but still, it's true.
100,000 bitcoins seized....that's crazy. i wonder if this syndicate was involved in some exchange hacks.
i wonder how much of this the american government can get their hands on, given the FBI involvement in the case. i'm also starting to wonder if the US marshall auctions like we've seen in the past will still continue. at some point, governments will want to keep some BTC in reserve.
That x10 in size is based on total numbers recorded by SR in 2012. And usage exploded in 2013.
The only number they had to measure SR sales was the profits they've made in 2012 that was around 22m$.
Alpha bay was bragging about 600k$ sales a day, from here we this x10.
But if we compare numbers from a month before the bust, AB was just x2 times bigger and that more than 3 years after the fall of SR, 3 years in which usage would should hav gone in terms on x10 or x20 up.
Unfortunately darkmarkets are having the life experience of torrent websites.
They come out of nowhere, attract millions and then the website closes down. But, the problem is that when Kickass went down nobody lost millions like when the exit scam from sheepmaket happened.
This is why I believe those numbers are either inflated from coins that were bought years ago or by other kind of illegal activities. No DM is the place to deal in billions.
That would be a bad thing for bitcoin as the FBI is trying to hold a large amount of bitcoin for their purposes. I think if the FBI really studied bitcoin, that might change some of my perceptions of bitcoin because with their technical level the FBI could do as much as they wanted with bitcoin. I will confirm more about this information.
You will confirm nothing about this since the FBI can't hold coins.
It's not how things work.
For example it was the FBI that seized the coins but it was the USMS that sold them.
$1,000,000,000 stolen or untraced can fund a WAR.
Not for long...
