Ross Olbricht received a $ 31 million donation from a dark web merchant, suspected of Crypto

When Ross Olbrech received $ 31 million Bitcoin Donate last week from an unknown source, many observers saw more than a very beautiful gift. Rumors have spread that the Silk Road creator, less than five months later Receive the pardon Donald Trump, who saved him in prison, was sending himself to his criminal revenue from his days Run the first black market on the dark internet More than a previous contract.

Now the investigators say that they followed the cryptocurrency that they have reached a strange explanation: The money was not originally ulbricht, and they did not come from the path of silk. Instead, they are suspected that it came from various Darkly dark black market: Alfabay.

Crypto Tracing Chainalysis Wire tells that, based on Blockchain analysis, it has linked the original 300 bitcoins sent to Ulbricht on Sunday to a person involved in Alphabay, a dark web market that sold a wide range of medicines and Cybercriminal Class from 2014 to 2017, and in the end grew 10 times The size of the Silk Road, according to the FBI.

Chainalysis says it seems that the money has appeared from Alphabay in about 2016 and 2017. Given the donation amount, Chainalysis notes that he might be from someone who has behaved as a large -scale seller in the market. “We have reasonable reasons to doubt that these funds were originated in Alphabai,” says Phil Larat, Director of Investigations in the Investigation Series and a former National Crime Agency official. “Given the amount, this indicates that they came from a person who may have been a seller in Alphabay in the first days.”

WIRED has reached Ulbricht to comment on the origin of the donation via contacts in the free Ross campaign that pressed the pardon, but she did not receive a response immediately.

Before the discovery of ChaINALYSIS that the 31 million dollar donation appears to have originated in Alphabay, an independent encryption tracker known as the name Zachbt It was already Posted on his X account The results that the money does not seem to have come from the Silk Road. Zachbt found that although the donors used several Bitcoin mixers that take in user currencies and return others to direct their path on Blockchain, he was able to track money into a marketed address in the Chainalysis software reactor as linked to illegal activity. This analysis indicated that the money was a “legitimate, but not legal money,” Zakkist wrote in a text message to Wire.

Zachbt also found that the same person who dominated the money had sent another encrypted currency in a small exchange in small quantities instead of one amount, indicating that he may have been trying to prevent them or put a mark on him – another sign that the money may be of criminal assets. “Using multiple mixers, publishing CEX deposits, etc.,” Zachxbt is written to Wire, using the CEX term to mean a central exchange, “this is usually done if you are trying to avoid freezing illegal money.”