Topic: 10 BTC Casascius up for auction on Stacks Bowers (Read 1301 times)

Not that I am aware of and have read many things about Silk Road 1/DPR...

They redeem them. Who knows what happens to the physical remnants. Maybe they melt them down into USD silver/fiat?

No idea really, but let us know what they say if you contact them about it, would be interesting I guess?

Is there any evidence that DPR, or one of the marshal's dealt with, or acquired physicals in any way? Pretty sure that a coin and its addy with that kind of verifiable provenance, has a premium attached (unlike it being owned by Charlie Lee).

And, who is going to contact the DOJ to ask what they do/did with peeled physicals?

IANAL, but I am the son of one, and I was of the same opinion, that he bought direct from Mike, so whoever bought them should be fine.

Laws are a bitch, but I can find my way to look them up thanks to my dear dad at least.

As for the silver bars, I got a good laugh at that myself, and no idea. Maybe he doesn't /didn't know much about PM's?

With how many coins he has along withthe original flaps and blue tape, I would not be surprised if he bought from Mike directly back in the day. Confiscating the "stolen" BTC fcrom someone who received it in an entirely legal transaction would seem unlikely, particularly if they also seized the item purchased with the BTC -- that's double dipping  .

As far as anyone knows, all the physical BTC he had was seized, and its looking like the government decided to peel which I think makes sense in this case as they have a liquidation timeline. I do wonder what they are doing with the spent coins- maybe keepsakes for the agents, maybe returned to Zhong as 'empty' (unlikely), or auctioned off?

What I find particularly funny is the tiny-ass silver bars he had stashed away along 170+ BTC and small mountain of cash.. was he thinking diversification?

   Elias...awesome article and one for the history books for sure!

    With all that money/BTC the guy could've bought a private island away from it all and dissapeared for life and still be a king of his castle so to speak.

     BTC loaded on coins is a nice way to wash BTC from being tracked....I wonder what happens when the seller of say the 25 BTC cas coin gets the illegitamate BTC the feds are tracking....will that be considered stolen BTC/property and would that be confiscated?

A great read.  Ty.

Thats hilarious.

Nicely done Elias 

I need to point out that I wrote an article about this case for Cointelegraph 

https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/3-4-billion-bitcoin-popcorn-tin-silk-road-hacker/

That article also gives the number of seized Cas coins and total value: "25 Casascius coins (physical bitcoin) worth about 174 BTC";

Almost same no. of coins, same total BTC as per [quote link=topic=5463281.msg62742820#msg62742820 date=1692896989]
...
If we follow the 173 BTC, first it is joined by the proceeds (minus fees) of another Cas1 piece (which, was spent a couple of hours earlier (testing?) to the same address, which (also as a test) was split as 0.01 BTC going to the same 3BGbd address as the 174....

...the redeeming and spending of these 26 Cas coins is part of the consolidation (sale?) of Loaded's confiscated hoard.
[/quote]

...so they are, I'd say almost certainly those coins and the peeling was most likely DOJ (or expert contracted to them) meaning stillherehodling, seek3r, Mbitr were right!

I'm still intrigued as to whether all those 10 BTC UTXOs, the 79.2s (and others moved / split / joined within hours) - all coming from a UTXO that came indirectly from a 9k tx from March 2023 which, a couple of hops further back, was itself formed from multiple 1k UTXOs in March 2022 are also to do with Loaded's stolen stash?

But it would take someone with more skills / tools / time than I have for that.

The guy in the article is also this guy here - https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/loaded-73652

What a f'ckn idiot hacker/scammer....  

https://news.bitcoin.com/us-announces-historic-3-36-billion-cryptocurrency-seizure-as-silk-road-bitcoin-thief-pleads-guilty/

   That is some treasure trove they got there! I can only dream of owning these loaded!

   What exactly was in the roll with the blue tape? 1 BTC Cas coins?

If I may don my tinfoil hat and join the party at this late stage ...

There's a few fascinating things about the spending of these six Cas 25s last month:

First is that not only were, as pointed out above, they in the same block, they were all inputs in a single transaction of 173 (+ dust) BTC - and here's the thing...
...along with a Cas 5 piece and 18 x assumedly 2012 brass 1s (plus dust UTXOs those same coins). https://mempool.space/tx/6f72bcab8f2f9870cec6223411ce982d18d4bca2a085df7c641051ec500f3d64#vin=29

The BCH from the same coins was also sent as a single tx. https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/address/1GLXybywwsGjV6YrVM16nb3GZWKzLG3uX1 (but not BSV)

That's not some randomer (or burgler) 'sweeping' coins one-at-a-time but someone with sufficient expertise to presumably create a complex online unsigned txs using the coins' addresses and separately inputting the privkeys to an off-line device for signing for both forks - at least I think there's a high probability that's how it was done.


If we follow the 173 BTC, first it is joined by the proceeds (minus fees) of another Cas1 piece (which, was spent a couple of hours earlier (testing?) to the same address, which (also as a test) was split as 0.01 BTC going to the same 3BGbd address as the 174 (multi-sig, or non-native segwit?)

Now here's where my tinfoil-hattedness might be getting off the rails....

Within 20 mins, the funds are on the go again, this time, being joined by a whole bunch of 10BTC UTXOs. This could, of course, be an exchange wallet, as could the 3BGbd address but what are all those 10 BTC native-segwit  UTXOs?!

Tracing them back, they all appear to come from UTXOs of 79.2xxx BTC and one hop further back has them all come from a single UTXO of 8.2k BTC - all of which happened on that same day.

So what to draw from that? First, to be clear, it's all guess work of course and I'm no sleuth and have no access to chain analysis tools or 'known' addresses, just simply someone intrigued clicking through a blockchain explorer... But my guess is that this is evidence that could support the theory that the redeeming and spending of these 26 Cas coins is part of the consolidation (sale?) of Loaded's confiscated hoard.

Just my thoughts - and btw. even though we've departed so far from the original topic of this thread, I've enjoyed how, step-by-step we got here

Well, for me, thats the recently peeled x6 25s. Thanks for posting.

That blue tape is Caldwell's handy work, also. 

 

Have a look at this article 

https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/50-676-btc-seized-by-u-s-detectives-found-stolen-crypto-in-bottom-of-popcorn-tin

so these pics are from seized items from the authorities ?

Knew I had the photo somewhere - apologies going very off topic now

I guess you are talking about "Loaded" from here. Yeah they fund a few Casascius-Coins at the time he got arrested.


Yeah I agree on that. Most likely no "value" for them. Still breaks the hearts of all crypto collectors. 

I don't think they'll sell them to collectors if that's what you mean. My guess: it stays in a box labeled "evidence" for many years.

Seized physicals, maybe?? (im thinking the recent young fat asian guy with glasses, whos name i cant remember and video i cant find, whos officially seized physical collection was flashed on screen for a second) ....which begs the question, what would US authorities do with these after they possibly peeled them?

Now seems like an odd time to peel those coins. Maybe someone passed away or there was a robbery. It makes little sense to hold for so long and then peel after a massive price drop. I doubt the owner was scared of BTC dropping further. What would get me to peel mine would be a massive bubble where I was afraid the price would drop before I could find a buyer.