Closing down the Silk Road and arresting its alleged operator has left the FBI in uncharted territory. After shuttering the site, law enforcement went to work confiscating the money and materials belonging to supposed drug king Ross Ulbricht, but this usually routine procedure is proving especially troublesome in this case. The cache of more than 600,000 bitcoins in Ulbricht’s personal fortune are still inaccessible to the FBI.
The nearly 600,000 thought to be worth around $80 millions worth that Ulbricht had, was held separately and is encrypted. At current exchange rates, that represents slightly more than 5% of all bitcoins in circulation.
The U.S. federal government transferred 26,000 BTC to a private wallet that has become a target for pranksters who have turned it into a sort of anti-government graffiti wall. And an increasing number of payments to the tune of 0.00000001 BTC are coming in to FBI's private wallet with messages attached as a so-called "public note."
You can check out the comments as they come in by watching the FBI’s wallet.