Bitcoin Forum

We all know that the US Government has auctioned bitcoins in the past and continue to do so whenever they manage to get their hands on a significant stash of them. The Australian Government also has plans to auction off a stash of bitcoins worth $9.4 million:

http://www.coindesk.com/australian-government-soon-hold-9-million-bitcoin-auction/

But have there been any confirmed examples of the reverse happening - i.e. governments BUYING cryptos? At first glance, Bitcoin's qualities seem quite contrary to what a state might feel is desirable. After all, it's decentralized, its supply is scarce and resistant to manipulation, it's difficult to tax, and it's relatively anonymous. But gold also shares much of the same properties and that has not stopped governments around the world from investing in gold.

the rules are that you print money, steal btc and buy gold. but they steal money and gold too. so theft is really the common denominator here that shows their specialty, i suppose.

Exactly. I don't think they'll care about buying btc because why bother when they can just print their own, but they'll confiscate it when they can and sell it for dirty cash. It's always funny to me how 'criminals' can't profit from crime but the police certainly can. It's a corrupt system.

So Another Price fall of BTC is coming:)

probably there will come a dip after the auction. but it will rise again even higher.

Why they buy cryptos? To earn money? Yes, some governments will look to invest money but the risk levels of crypt is just too high, so obviously they will chose some safer investments.

The risk is not high if they only buy a few Bitcoin.

There is no proven data about bitcoin's government transactions so we cannot confirm that government is indeed buying bitcoin. But I feel that they are already doing that. I think it is hardly possible for them to overlook cryptocurrency revolution happening, and they are perfectly aware of this fact. I just wait for definitive confirmation.

Government s don't need to buy cryptos. They confiscate them. If one day they want to hold cryptos, they could tax crypto and allow payment in crypto.

its is dipping already

the only coin that governments may hold, are those that come from illegal acrivity, i doubt they are buying any coin, they have their own currency called fiat....

That leads to a good question on why governments don't hold the coins just like anyone else and wait for it to gain mainstream adoption and then appreciate in value. And they would rather sell at a loss which puzzles me. Or does that mean they don't see the potential within bitcoin itself or for some other reasons.

You are right they do hold the coins for awhile until ready for auction or sale, if they was to buy them op that would be a total waste of their time because they could just accept it as tax or some other form of payment and end up with most/a lot of the supply without ever buying a coin.

How exactly are they selling at a loss when they have been seized? It's free money going back into "their" system

I don't think that any govt would buy cryptos (maybe police or secret services if necessary). Cryptos are dust if you compare it to the amount of money govts playing with.

People are talking about the government seizing bitcoin but wouldn't that be hard to do if the person who as doing illiegal things with them had a secure wallet? Would the government force them to put in a password to decrypt it or something of the sort?

If someone can get a couple of more years behind bars for not cooperating with the police, then I guess most of them do not need to much force to persuade. (Except long term investors :).)

That's an excellent point that's not been addressed, what if they simply store private keys in safety deposit box and refuse to hand over details, as long as they were careful nothing was left on their hard drives then they could simply serve their time for the punishment and come out, retain the private keys and have control once again over the BTC, mix them up then use them right?

I believe this is essentially what Dread Pirate Roberts is doing right now minus the safety deposit box part since the feds could simply force or smash their way into that if they really wanted to. Those bitcoins that the feds auctioned last year weren't actually DPR's personal bitcoins that he earned from his website. They were the coins owned by his customers which were kept unprotected and unlocked. His personal stash was and still is encrypted and the feds don't have access to it (yet).

So as long as DPR doesn't crack under pressure and I'm sure they would try to make things very uncomfortable for him, he could serve his time and then come out the other side with access to the coins that he didn't give up right?

I don't really know the specifics of his particular case but if he used a brainwallet then yes, he could do that. If he had any paper wallets stashed away in a secret hiding place, then the answer is also yes. Same goes for if he had backed up his wallet.dat in an encrypted archive in the cloud. However, if the only place where he kept his encrypted wallet was in his hard drive and the feds don't give this back to him then it won't be possible for him to retrieve his coins.

The government is not some imaginary super power house, it consists of lots of normal people and most of them are not so clever. They must follow the procedure to auction forfeited assets. They simply don't understand the value in bitcoin and only after mainstream financial institutions join the game, they will start to take it more seriously

governments have no reason to buy btc when they can just seize them...US government has tons