US Government Moves Nearly 10k Bitcoin Worth Over $300 Million Related To Silk Road Seizure:
Initially, approximately 9,825 of the Bitcoin associated with the Silk Road seizure moved in a pair of transactions sent to three addresses at around 1:00 pm UTC. The bulk of the coins — 8,200 BTC worth nearly $250 million as of the time of this article’s publication — were sent to a single address, which subsequently split the total amount across 101 separate addresses a little over an hour later:
GenXXL makes the ironic point.
buh muh digital tulips are immune to government interference
Imaverb answers rotely:
Silk guys handed it over.
Yes, they did hand over their bitcoin, in exchange for reduced sentences. There is no secure store of value.
That’s the whole point about Bitcoin. There is no security. Government thugs can just tell you to give it to them. And it doesn’t matter where you are in the world. A pair of them can just force you to hand over the keys right here and now and then disappear into the night.
Same deal with criminals. Bitcoin is safe as long as it’s anonymous. It’s not.
All crypto gains are subject to windfall and capital gains tax. For US citizens, if the IRS haven’t arrived yet to demand their share, eventually they will. Withholding information from the IRS is a criminal act, its formal name is tax evasion. Each count of tax evasion mandates up to 5 years of prison. Will citizens nots just hand over all of their crypto to avoid a jail term? Most would.
Then there’s the ethical side. Spending a significant portion of the world’s electrical resources generating bogus proof of work certificates is a betrayal of the human race and the planet. Yes there are worse energy violators (US military, certain shipping companies). Alas their bad behaviour doesn’t excuse this kind of senseless waste.
When historians go back to study the early 21st century, the digital proof of work concept will mystify them as much as wampum and tulip mania mystify us now.