Ross Ulbricht, the imprisoned founder of the Silk Road darknet marketplace who was granted clemency by US President Donald Trump earlier this year, received a whopping $31 million Bitcoin donation from an anonymous wallet over the previous weekend.

The sizable gift, sent less than five months after Ulbricht’s sentence was commuted, immediately sparked speculation that he had covertly reclaimed old Silk Road earnings.

Anonymous Bitcoin Gift to Ross Ulbricht

According to the intel shared by cryptocurrency tracing firm Chainalysis with WIRED, the 300 BTC donation did not originate from Silk Road at all. Instead, the funds appear to trace back to AlphaBay, a now-defunct darknet market that operated between 2014 and 2017, well after Silk Road’s takedown.

AlphaBay, which was reportedly ten times the size of Silk Road at its peak, was known for trafficking in drugs, malware, and illegal services. Phil Larratt, Chainalysis’s director of investigations and a former UK law enforcement official, said there are “reasonable grounds to suspect” the Bitcoin came from someone involved with AlphaBay – likely a former vendor, given the size of the amount.

Prominent blockchain investigator ZachXBT, who had earlier examined the donation, also concluded the funds did not come from Silk Road.

Despite the sender’s use of Bitcoin mixing services, ZachXBT traced the BTC to a wallet previously flagged by Chainalysis as connected to illicit activity. He shared his conclusion with WIRED, wherein he noted that the donation itself may be genuine, but “not legitimate funds.”

Additional clues suggest the person behind the transfer may have been actively trying to avoid detection: ZachXBT discovered the same individual had previously cashed out other crypto through centralized exchanges in small, spread-out amounts, rather than large single transactions. This behavior is consistent with an effort to evade asset freezing or scrutiny.

AlphaBay Crackdown

Chainalysis reportedly declined to share specifics on how exactly it linked the donation to AlphaBay.  But it is important to note that the firm is widely known for its expertise in mapping illicit activity across blockchain networks and played a crucial role in dismantling the now-defunct marketplace during the multinational law enforcement initiative known as Operation Bayonet, involving the FBI, DEA, and Europol.

The crackdown later led to the conviction of Bryan Connor Herrell, an AlphaBay moderator, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison. As for Ulbricht, he has not publicly addressed the donation.

US authorities have made significant progress in combating cryptocurrency-related crime by seizing approximately $31 million linked to the 2021 Uranium Finance hack.

The announcement was made by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in San Diego this week, nearly four years after the attack.

Uranium Hack Seizure

The hack, which occurred on April 28, 2021, exploited a critical vulnerability in Uranium Finance’s smart contracts during its transition to the V2.1 protocol. The flaw in its pair contracts allowed the attacker to withdraw nearly all available assets.

This resulted in a theft of roughly $50 million in various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), Binance USD (BUSD), Polkadot (DOT), Cardano (ADA), Tether (USDT), and Uranium’s native token, U92.

Initially, suspicion surrounding the attack grew due to its timing, which occurred mere days after Uranium Finance launched its V2 upgrade. Adding to the controversy, the project’s contract repository was suddenly removed from GitHub, which led many in the community to speculate about potential insider involvement. Doubts about the platform’s security also intensified, especially since it had already experienced a $1.3 million breach earlier in the same month.

The attacker quickly laundered the stolen funds with the help of controversial crypto mixer Tornado Cash, and AnySwap, a cross-chain bridge, to transfer assets across blockchains. Despite these obfuscation attempts, law enforcement managed to recover a significant portion of the stolen funds.

Attacks on Crypto Platforms

The latest seizure comes as cryptocurrency-related cybercrimes continue to rise, with a recent high-profile hack targeting Bybit which lost an estimated $1.4 billion in crypto assets. The FBI has officially attributed the heist to North Korea, further cementing the country’s role in global crypto theft.

With total stolen funds in 2024 reaching $2.2 billion, this marks the fifth time in the past decade that annual losses have exceeded $1 billion. Interestingly, North Korea’s cybercriminal operations now account for 61% of the total stolen crypto this year and 20% of all hacking incidents,