PANews reported on January 23 that, according to Fortune magazine, although Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht has regained his freedom, his lost wealth cannot be recovered. In 2013, the FBI seized 144,000 bitcoins held by Ulbricht, and the U.S. Marshals Service arranged a series of auctions in 2014 to sell more than 144,000 bitcoins belonging to Ulbricht.

In a stroke of bad timing, the marshals sold the bitcoins in early 2014, when the price of bitcoin had fallen from more than $1,000 to modern lows near $300. Today, the 144,000 bitcoins are worth about $14 billion, but they sold for just over $48 million at the time, or about $334 apiece — less than 0.5% of their current value.

Ulbricht had launched a legal challenge to the forfeiture but ultimately gave up and waived any claim to the bitcoins in 2017. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the auction was venture capitalist Tim Draper, who snapped up about 30,000 bitcoins. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has since pursued other cryptocurrency forfeiture cases tied to Silk Road, including seizing and selling bitcoins stolen by corrupt federal agents during the initial investigation and obtaining a court order this month to sell thousands of bitcoins the agency seized from an anonymous hacker who also robbed Ulbricht.