US files notice to sell $130M in bitcoin linked to Silk Road agent

The US filed a notice to sell over 2,900 bitcoin, some of which is linked to a former Secret Service agent

article-image

Adobe Stock and Shutterstock-Pixelsquid/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

The United States filed a notice to sell over $130 million in bitcoin linked to the Silk Road forfeitures. 

The public notification lists two lots of bitcoin that the government plans to sell.The first is roughly 2,800 BTC for roughly $129 million. The second, smaller, lot would sell 58 BTC for about $3 million. 

The bitcoins are linked to Ryan Farace, who was sentenced in Maryland last year to 54 months in prison on a charge of money laundering conspiracy. 

Farace and his father, Joseph, were found guilty of laundering bitcoin initially used for drug trafficking that should have been forfeited to the US. Farace, initially convicted in 2018, claimed to not have access to bitcoin used for darknet transactions. 

However, he and his father were found to have conspired in an attempt to “transfer more than 2,874 Bitcoin to a third party, so that the funds could be moved into a foreign bank account.”

“According to their guilty pleas and other court documents, in November 2018, Ryan Farace was convicted in U.S. District Court in Maryland for a scheme to manufacture and distribute [Xanax] in exchange for Bitcoin through sales on darknet marketplaces,” a Department of Justice press release said

The first lot of bitcoin was also tied to Shaun Bridges, a former Secret Service agent and part of the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force. 

Bridges was sentenced to a six-year prison term in 2015 in connection with the theft of BTC during the US government’s investigation of the Silk Road dark marketplace. 

“According to admissions made in connection with his guilty plea, Bridges admitted to using a private key to access a digital wallet belonging to the U.S. government, and subsequently transferring the bitcoin to other digital wallets at other bitcoin exchanges to which only he had access,” a Department of Justice press release said

Both Farace’s were ordered to forfeit their bitcoin, while Bridges agreed to “turn over the stolen bitcoin to US agents.”


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

The convergence of DePIN and energy generation aims to address modern grid challenges by incentivizing distributed generation.

article-image

However, they noted there’s now an increased risk that unemployment and inflation will rise in the coming months. 

article-image

The network’s most ambitious upgrade since the Merge brings validator streamlining, smart account UX and doubled blobspace to Ethereum

article-image

Debate over extra Bitcoin use cases has returned, two years on from Ordinals

article-image

Altcoin season may be on a permanent pause as the market matures and paths grow more selective

article-image

Today’s blockchains are more like nervous systems without a brain — wiring without will

article-image

A number of blockchains make use of the Solana Virtual Machine