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Bitcoin mainnet · Public custody · 2013–2020

On-chain record · high source confidence

US DOJ — Silk Road "Individual X" Forfeiture (2020)

In November 2020 the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California filed a civil forfeiture complaint (case 3:20-cv-07811) against approximately 69,370 BTC that had sat untouched at a single address since April 2013. The complaint states the coins were moved out of Silk Road in 2013 through two intermediary addresses by a person it calls only "Individual X", and that the funds were obtained by the government on or about 3 November 2020. The coins were consolidated into a government-controlled address that has received but never spent. Forfeiture was contested by third-party claimants and litigated for several years afterwards.

Research author: · Group author: · Published 2026-08-06 · Internal review: · Corrections

Bitcoin ancestry star map for US DOJ — Silk Road "Indi… (2020), 4 degrees from the first bitcoin 1°2°3°4°SATOSHITHE BITCOIN FAUCET…201020122012US DOJ — SILK ROAD "IND…1HQ3Go…Hbhx4° FROM THE FIRST BITCOIN
4 hops from the working origin.
1 of 2 documented addresses
1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx

seized source address ("1HQ3") named in the DOJ civil forfeiture complaint; emptied 3 Nov 2020

Era
2013–2020
Script
P2PKH
First seen
April 2013
Connected
April 2013
Evidence
4 sources
First seen
April 2013
Connected
April 2013
Route display ID
4°-5D9E-7850Display identifier only — not proof of ownership.
2 additional population comparisons
Global contextCloser than 97.4% of scored addresses
Same-era contextCloser than 97% of scored addresses first seen in 2013

Evidence boundary

What is — and is not — established

The source address and the two 2013 intermediary addresses are named verbatim in the government's own filed complaint, which is as primary as a source gets. The custody address is NOT named in any filing retrieved here — it is identified by third-party labelling services (Spark, BitInfoCharts) and corroborated by an exact match to the complaint's stated amount and date (69,370.22 BTC, 3 November 2020) against on-chain data. "Individual X" has never been publicly identified and no living individual is named. Note that the complaint's own caption truncates the address to "...FnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbh" while paragraph 17 gives the full 34-character form; the truncation is a defect in the filing, not a different address.

The dossier

Evidence record

Address record

Role
seized source address ("1HQ3") named in the DOJ civil forfeiture complaint; emptied 3 Nov 2020
Script
P2PKH
Category
Public custody
Source confidence
high
Catalog reviewed
2026-08-06
View all 2 documented addresses
  1. 011HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8HbhxP2PKH · representative
  2. 02bc1qa5wkgaew2dkv56kfvj49j0av5nml45x9ek9hz6P2WPKH

Source ledger

4 cited
  1. storage.courtlistener.com/…/gov.uscour….0.pdf
  2. spark.money/…/bc1qa5wkga…ek9hz6
  3. bitinfocharts.com/top-100-ri…s.html
  4. mempool.space/…/bc1qa5wkga…ek9hz6
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