Unknown actors moved ~4800 BTC ($144 million) from the Abraxas darknet marketplace, whose team carried out an exit scam in November 2015. On-chain sleuth ZachXBT drew attention to it.
An entity moved ~4800 BTC ($144M) originating from Abraxas darknet market which exit scammed in Nov 2015 after previously sitting dormant.
They consolidated funds and also deposited to a bitcoin mixer.
This graph shows an example of the movements from one of the addresses. pic.twitter.com/zVBSs6mrc4
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) October 23, 2023
The expert noted that funds that arrived almost eight years after the initial movements began to accumulate across several wallets. Some were sent to mixing services to launder them.
According to ZachXBT, the transactions are being driven by former administrators of the platform, since the bulk of the assets arrived at addresses at the time of the fraudulent scheme.
Some commentators agreed with his speculation, recalling that at least one hacker recently left prison.
“Imagine waiting 8 years, sitting on $1.5 million and watching it grow to $144 million,” wrote one user.
Imagine waiting 8 years and sitting on a 1.5mln an seeing it growing to 144mln.
Fucking crazy, where did they where from? Cant find any news about the team— bacca (@baccapaglierina) October 23, 2023
ZachXBT stressed that unknown actors are not attempting to sell the cryptocurrency — they are trying to “bleach” the assets, conducting operations as discreetly as possible.
In July, U.S. authorities again began moving bitcoins, seized from the Silk Road darknet marketplace in November 2020.
In early October, the platform’s founder Ross Ulbricht began serving the first decade of two life sentences handed down in 2015.