Silk Road scouts hit the trail again with a new crypto-investigative firm
In 2013, Chris Tarbell became part of one of the most infamous episodes in Bitcoin history when he led an FBI investigation that helped identify and arrest Dread Pirate Roberts, the mastermind behind the notorious online drug and weapons marketplace Silk Road. The investigation, described in Nick Bilton’s excellent American Kingpininvolved tracking and seizing massive amounts of crypto now worth billions of dollars.
Today, Tarbell is still working with crypto, but in a new capacity. He and cryptographer Matt Edman, who helped find and extract thousands of Bitcoins from the Dread Pirate’s wallet, have just launched a company called Naxo that helps police, law firms and others find missing crypto.
While crypto forensics is not a new field – established firms include Chainalysis, Elliptic and CipherTrace (now owned by MasterCard) – Tarbell and Edman say Naxo is distinct because it’s not only able to track funds moving across blockchains , but also offers a hand. -on service to clients to get the crypto back. The company’s clients include federal agencies like the Department of Justice and white-shoe law firms like Alston & Bird.
Tarbell and Edman, who spent years at FTI and other major consulting firms, say Naxo is also building niche practice areas such as helping those who own crypto but don’t have access to it. The pair say the company also specializes in finding more obscure cryptocurrencies that are popular with criminals because law enforcement lacks off-the-shelf hardware to track them.
Their story is another example of how many people who rose to prominence during the Wild West days of early Bitcoin have become leaders in what is now a mainstream industry. It also shows how there are fortunes to be made not just from stealing crypto, but tracking down the crooks who do it.
Jeff John Roberts
[email protected]
@jeffjohnroberts
This is the online version of Fortune Crypto, a daily newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox for free.
DECENTRALIZED NEWS
As Bitcoin remains locked in a narrow price band near $20,000, some “boring” analysts are hyping the coin’s next halving (when the block reward drops to 3.125) in 2024.
Kraken has a large number of C-suite vacancies and is navigating how to become a large company months after its founder stepped down as CEO; one employee described the incoming CEO as “trading charisma for professionalism.”
A crypto hater Business week writer recounts how video game communities have launched successful campaigns to keep NFTs out of games.
A group of private investors burned out Terra‘s collapse conducts a global hunt to track down the project’s founder; they claim to approach him in Dubai.
TeslaQ3 earnings revealed that, unlike in Q2, the automaker didn’t sell any of it Bitcoin and still holds about $218,000,000 worth.
MEME O’ MOMENT
This is the online version of Fortune Crypto, a daily newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox for free.
