Darknet marketplace Silk Road–linked cryptocurrency wallets have sprung back into action, less than a year after U.S. President Donald Trump issued a full pardon to its imprisoned founder, Ross Ulbricht.
Data from blockchain analytics platform Arkham shows that on Tuesday, the Silk Road–tagged wallets moved roughly $3.14 million in Bitcoin. The 176 transactions represent the wallets’ most substantial activity in five years; prior to this, they had only carried out three small test transfers earlier in 2025.
All of the newly executed transfers were sent to an unidentified Bitcoin address, bc1qn. While the primary Silk Road–associated wallets still hold approximately $38.4 million in BTC, the new address currently contains only the $3.14 million forwarded in the latest batch of transactions.
Cointelegraph was unable to verify the ownership of the new wallet and has reached out to Ulbricht for comment.
In January, Trump granted a full pardon to Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who had been serving a double life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 for creating and operating Silk Road, the darknet marketplace that enabled anonymous transactions of illicit goods using Bitcoin.
Following the pardon, supporters have sent roughly $270,000 in Bitcoin to the Free Ross campaign, according to on-chain data.
Silk Road founder may still control millions in unseized crypto
Although the U.S. government seized at least $3.36 billion in Bitcoin connected to Silk Road, some analysts believe Ulbricht may still have access to additional wallets that were never recovered.
Coinbase director Conor Grogan noted that 430 BTC — valued at about $47 million — remains untouched in wallets likely tied to Ulbricht. Those funds have sat dormant for more than 13 years.
Another Silk Road–linked wallet, believed to belong to Ulbricht, holds $8.3 million in Bitcoin. According to Arkham, the wallet has remained largely inactive for 14 years, aside from three minor test transactions over the past 10 months.
