The U.S. is prosecuting for the forfeiture of bitcoins worth more than $ 1 billion, as it is believed that these are connected to the criminal market place i.e. Silk Road which was closed 7 years ago.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department seized thousands of bitcoins that represent the highest cryptocurrency bust the govt has ever made.

In 2015, the founder of Silk Road left open millions of questions. The forfeiture complaint has answered those questions not fully but at least in parts.

Bitcoin, the digital currency jumped approximately 9% to 15,300. In December 2017, it reached to it’s highest level of $ 20,000 before diving to about $ 3000 in less than a year.

As per the reports, 54 undiscovered bitcoin transactions of Silk Road were identified by the agents of Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division which were executed by them previously.

According to the Justice Department, the agents traced a bitcoin address through which they were able to determine the accused hacker. Bitcoin address is the 4th well heeled, as per BitInfoCharts ranking.

U.S. considers the Silk Road website, the most experienced and large scale illegal market place on the internet. In 2013, before the U.S. agents closed the Silk Road, it used bitcoin to peddle everything, for instance, to sell drugs.

In accordance with the court documents, Silk Road used Bitcoins from 2011 to 2013 in order to generate the $ 1.2 billion from illegal sales and gained $ 80 million in commissions in less than 3 years.

Crypto Researcher Chainalysis helped law enforcement by lending its equipments to recognize the largest cryptocurrency wallets associated to Silk Road and also in tracing down the funds. According to Chainalysis, Silk Roas is responsible for almost 20 % of total economic activities of bitcoin in 2013.

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