According to the onchain analyst Zachxbt, 4,800 bitcoins taken from the now-defunct darknet marketplace Abraxas were transferred to a bitcoin mixing service. Abraxas exit scammed in November 2015 after less than a year, and the bitcoins had remained untouched since then.
$144M in Bitcoin from 2015 Abraxas Scandal Suddenly Moved to Mixer
Zachxbt reported on the social media site X (formerly Twitter) that the 4,800 bitcoins, valued at $144 million, from an Abraxas wallet were moved to a mixing service.
“An entity moved ~4800 BTC ($144M) originating from Abraxas darknet market which exit scammed in Nov 2015 after previously sitting dormant,” the analyst said on Monday. “They consolidated funds and also deposited [them into] a bitcoin mixer,” Zachxbt added.
When Abraxas defrauded its customers and vendors, bitcoin was trading at $386 per unit on the day the marketplace disappeared. This means the stolen bitcoins from Abraxas were worth about $1.85 million at that time.
Abraxas began its operations roughly at the same time as the notorious darknet marketplaces Alphabay and Agora, launching on Dec. 13, 2014. Data from gwern.net shows that the site became inaccessible on Nov. 5, 2015, and the bitcoin wallets were emptied in March 2016.
Following Abraxas’ exit scam, vendors and marketplace users frantically looked for new darknet marketplaces. In the process, several of these new platforms also defrauded their users. Research indicates that Agora also shut down around that period, leading both Agora and Abraxas users to migrate to Alphabay.
Subsequently, Alphabay rapidly became the leading DNM until law enforcement seized it in July 2017. The reason for the recent movement of the Abraxas bitcoin stash remains unknown, except for the fact that the funds are now worth $142 million more than they were in 2015.
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