I forgot that Russ' attorneys agreed to sell the 144k coins and they would fight for the dollars later.. the 50k that are being sold this month are most likely from the 144k that was part of his personal stash and not on the SR site..
Ive tried to find the letter from his attorneys stating that but cant find. He hasn't been found guilty and if the govt confiscates property or cash from you, you have a certain amount of time to fight it. He didn't fight the the coins that came directly from the SR site, because if he did, he would be admitting that he controlled them and was indeed DPR.
The 144k coins were on his personal wallet that didn't have andy direct ties to SR, so russ' attorneys said they wanted to fight for them, but then agreed to sell the coins since bitcoin is so volatile and will fight for the money after the trial.
Id like to hear where he got that many coins... Would love to see his farm
(j/k)....
What I cant to wait to find out (if we ever do)is how the government was able to decrypt his wallet. Ross did some stupid things, but I find it hard to believe that he didn't have 144k bitcoins locked up tight as a drum. My gut feeling is that the FBI got into his house when he wasn't home and put on a key logger, that makes the most sense, as the FBI is very good at doing things like that. Or he could have had the wallet opened when they took him down, but still, you would need a password to send coins. The trial is going to be very interesting...Why he didn't have the majority on a paper wallet and sent to a relative with the instructions "Dont open unless I get arrested or dead" Both DPR's were very book smart,, just dumb ass criminals...
He was taken down October 3rd I believe and they didn't get the 144k coins until a couple to three weeks later, so maybe they just had the NSA or their super computers do the work...
I guess we will just have to wait for the movie that Fox is producing. The BBC and A&E and Vice are doing a big documentary on this as well titled "The Dread Pirate Roberts"