$3.36B USD in Bitcoin (stolen a decade ago) has just been seized.
Here's a crazy story, with an even crazier ending.
If you haven't heard of Silk Road, do yourself a favor and check out the 2021 movie about it.
In short, it was a marketplace that operated on the dark web, which had no KYC (know your customer) requirements and used Bitcoin as the means of facilitating anonymous payments.
You could pretty much buy anything on there; from drugs, to weapons and fake IDs.
Which we don't condone...but many tout the rise of Silk Road to be the first reason for BTC adoption and the first real use case for it (and it took years to shake that reputation).
The creator of Silk Road is in jail for a double life sentence, plus forty years, without the ability for parole.
But this isn't a story about him.
The Feds just seized what is worth $3.36 Billion USD in BTC from a guy, who, back in the day, hacked Silk Road.
You've gotta have a pretty big brain to hack a platform that a hacker built. So how'd James Zhong do it?
He created nine fraudulent accounts on Silk Road, funding each with between 200 and 2,000 bitcoin.
He then triggered over 140 transactions in rapid succession, which was too much for the marketplace’s withdrawal-processing system to handle, causing it to accidentally release a bit over 50,000 bitcoin into his accounts.
Since that day, Zhong lived life large, posting photos on massive yachts, in front of airplanes, and at high-profile football games.
...but the party has now officially ended.
A few days ago, Zhong pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Stealing from criminals, to live a large life, only to meet a thief's end?
We look forward to the Netflix documentary.
