Any idea when they will auction the second stash (containing BTC145,000)? I heard that the lawyers of Ross Ullbricht are currently engaged in a legal battle to prevent their auctioning. I haven't heard anything about it in the last 30 days or so.
As far as I know they still don't have access to Rosses private keys
I can't find a news report from 2014 that mentions them having the access to it just the course case documents from the related links
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/02/07/alleged-silk-road-creator-ross-ulbricht-pleads-not-guilty-on-all-charges/http://www.wptv.com/news/science-tech/ross-ulbricht-wants-his-seized-bitcoins-back-suspected-of-selling-illegal-drugs-onlineThat is the reason they cannot sell them
I assumed he used a brainwallet and that is why the FBI is only able to auction off the Silk Road Bitcoins and not his stash
That said it is still confiscated and the property of the FBI for all intensive purposes.
http://blogs.reuters.com/unstructuredfinance/2013/10/14/fbi-not-waiting-for-silk-road-owners-bitcoin-pword/Excerpt
According to the Forbes report, the feds managed to seize all the Bitcoin Silk Road had in its accounts, but when it came to going after Ulbricht’s “personal” Bitcoin account, the job wasn’t that easy. Ulbricht had a higher level of protection on his own account than he did on Silk Road’s digital “wallets,” as they are called, and the feds are stuck waiting for Ulbricht to cough up his password before they can take his Bitcoin.
“We have seized everything we were entitled to seize under the civil forfeiture action,” said the spokesman, Peter Donald.
And indeed, while the civil forfeiture action does repeat the claim that Ulbricht at some point earned 600,000 Bitcoin for himself, it does not specifically address the question of where that currency ended up. Nor does it describe a digital wallet held by Ulbricht himself. It simply names the various wallets associated with Silk Road, all of which the FBI has accessed and emptied.
The difference is not a trifling one. The specter of $80 million being held in a place that can’t be accessed even by one of the world’s most aggressive law enforcement organizations is both a thrilling and a frightening possibility.
