Bitcoin Forum

24,518 BTC seized in 2012, when they were worth $336,000, are currently being auctioned by Ernst & Young and, as of today, they're worth $18,600,000. A gift from Satoshi to Australian taxpayers ;)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/cops-red-tape-and-a-25m-bitcoin-windfall/news-story/6de90658f976c3d1164fe8012241e55b?nk=db90bc3a56e034453f40669b544d006d-1466412588

Wow now country of australia discivered bitcoin is profitable. It is a good news if other country knows it many will curious about bitcoin and many bitcoin user will start their journey in bitcoin. What country should next to discover it so that it will help a lot to many bitcoin user. If we are many theres a chance that the demand of bitcoin will rise so the price of it will rise too.

I wonder will China or Japan will use their supercomputers to mine crypto. Put research aside! Haha

Another great source of income will be the tax from the potential candidate of Satoshi, Dr Craig...

Imagine if he holds 1 million BTC and need to pay tax for these coin based on today's price... Maybe Australia government should consider accepting BTC for tax payment as well.

Hmm. Good that they did not auction off or throw away these Bitcoin back in 2012.  I hope that these 20 000 and more Bitcoin will be sold for the correct price - and not lesser. I also hope that with this news, more people will agree that Bitcoin is a good currency to invest in.

Amazing to see that wheels of justice in Australia moves so slow that it takes more than 4 years to organize auction of seized property. Good for them though.
I guess appeal of Ross Ulbricht will take another 10 years just to go through whole bureaucratic machine of clerical nonsense.

This is kind of robbery done by Australian government from private parties and now they are making huge profit within just 4 years.

Government don't want the money and power to be distributed to their people for free. They want these to be with them only so that they can live a comfortable life and the normal people die out of misery.

This is not a Democratic structure. I wish some hacker hacks out these bitcoins from them.

Something tells me that governments learned a long time ago that seizing peoples' money is quite profitable.

I think this is a good news for bitcoin because it will increase the demand on it resulting to a pump on the price again.

Someone has done that before with Doge.
They used a supercomputer for mining, but it isn't much better than a few GPUs.  It would be a waste of processing power, even for a supercomputer.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/harvard-student-uses-14000-core-supercomputer-mine-dogecoin/

why would governments mine bitcoin?

much cheaper to pay a few 'officers' $200 each for a few days work to raid bitcoin services
think about it
receive a complaint from a customer of a bitcoin service. 5 minutes labour to read complaint.
check location of bitcoin service. 5 minutes labour
prepare a court order electronically. 5 minutes labour
pay the court administration
assemble a team
then go raid the location and raid, raid raid.

all done for under $2000(costs all included). reward=$18m

the australian goverment did discover but nor "literally", they just seized it and see the value now balloning,there's no statement that saying they're now discovering the benefits of bitcoin i think

That's a big profit for australian government in only 4 years, they could say thanks to bitcoin community and open more its country to bitcoin.  They could start allowing its residents to pay the taxes with bitcoins.

Unfortunately it only promotes this kind of behaviour. I also wonder why they took so long to sell it and just started auctioning the coins.

they have to let courts do their business and ensure there is no chance of an appeal.
EG imagine they did sell it in 2012 for under $500k.
but then their was an appeal later on in say 2014, which led to charges being dropped and the defendant wanted his 24k bitcoins back.
the government would have to pay him a current far market equivalent to the cost to repurchase those coins. thus costing the government say $9mill in 2014 or $18m now to return "property" value that they initially only profited under $500k from.

so once they know all the boxes are ticked and there is no way to lose.. they will sell.

in my eyes stuff like this and the US marshals thing that does promote a behaviour of "lets get rich", and then when holding the funds. knowing there is a risk of loss if they have to hand them back. they work twice as hard to try making any charges stick. including confessions/deals/pleas, rather than working on a impartial jury case based on facts and evidence to get a verdict.
which is where civil cases fall flat and can be abused in favour of governments.

theres many instances of it happening with state troopers "random searches" and border trooper, all grabbing cash rather then handling actual crimes

exactly this! after reading this topic the first thing that came to my mind was this, and it has nothing to do with bitcoin and government has been doing this for a long time before bitcoin even!

..or start taxing australian bitcoin users. Start checking sellers in localbitcoins.com

Instead of holding the Bitcoin and using them as a reserve for their worthless fiat currency they are doing what can be expected by economically inept officials (Remember the UK selling its gold near the all time low?). They will regret their decision soon. Maybe one day Australia's central bank will be buying Bitcoin at much higher prices at the open market...

I'm a bit surprised that quite a few people in this thread applaud the decision. It's sad that even in this forum many people still use fiat money as a reference for value. Bitcoin is much better money than fiat, because (among other aspects) it is not subject inflationary devaluation. Exchanging Bitcoin for fiat without being forced to do so is dumb.

ya.ya.yo!

Well, I'm glad that some government organization is getting a funding boost, but I don't think that they realize how valuable investing in Bitcoin is unless they sold it recently, after the value rise. Unless someone is able to track the transaction, I would be skeptical if they sold it for more than what they were worth back in 2012. Holding Bitcoin for 4 years seems like a pretty impossible task, especially when you're talking about a government organization.

Add to that the lawyer cost involved with the people who has to fight these cases in the courts and you have a huge expense to the tax payer. They fight these cases with our tax money, and we have

to defend ourselves with our own money too... a loose - loose scenario for the tax payers. The best thing for you to do, would simply be to plead guilty on lesser charges {if you are guilty} and to hope

for a plea bargain or a smaller sentence. {Your family will suffer a lot less, if you do} They have full control over us, even if we think we are free.  ::)

my numbers of $2000 are actually redundant numbers.. court appointed lawyers and police officers are paid a yearly salary. whether they dont raid a house or they raid 200 houses a year. so the true costs are not that measurable.

however the cost to the person getting raided can be massive. especially if a government is incentivised to raid based on less evidence and more greed than before.

i think not only  Australian but all over the world. the news is spreading that bitcoin is profitable. i think the trend has no completely change the people are entering in the world of bitcoin. they are investing their money in bitcoin. it is going to become a word wide crypto currency. this time i am sure that bitcoin will keep its position stable. its price will not decrease to such a low level. this time it will maintain its position.

lol, contracting to the ATO right now.  Tempted to slip a bitcoin payment option in...

https://i.imgsafe.org/87e75ea7a2.jpg

If Australia is auctioning off bitcoins, then I think this is another country that won't ban bitcoin. This is good news for those of us holding bitcoin for the long run.

if they believe Satoshi is Aussie they should have invested to bitcoin right when Craig was on the news.
After all Craig wouldn't aggressively want to own patent if he wouldn't earn thru it.

We do hope will not stop but increase the bitcoin users in the country. In that way other countries will also compete and will engage in bitcoin activities. This is the only way to make the price of monetary value skyrocket. This news is beneficial to all bitcoin users as well as to Australias economy. The time has come to encouraged all countries to use bitcoin and take part in the new cryptocurrency economy.

It will be interesting to see what they actually go for in auction.  Surely they will have to be auctioned off in smaller lots.  I would thibk they would struggle to find one buyer for such a large amount of bitcoin.

I have friend in Australia who worked there, I never expected that he's doing mining bitcoin too. When I heard that I felt excitement and so happy to hear that from him. He shared to me how bitcoin is very popular on their country and I'm so glad I had comrades friend who also like me doing mining bitcoins. Because obviously its very profitable. ;)

Did not know about this seizure of a large amount of bitcoin in Australia before. Heard only about that great sum that the FBI seized 3 years ago and auctioned it off.
I think we will be hearing most stories like this one in the future about several other countries as well.  :D

Over the past most users thought that it was fully used for illegal activities, now people's mentality have changed alot due to the increasing popularity of bitcoin. Now not only Australia, worldwide people were focusing to be a part of the profiting currency.

Im from Australia. Found that out in 2012 :-/


But the problem is that first impressions stick. My friends all still think that bitcoin is a Ponzi, and so on. My father is a stockbroker and honestly, he's too tied to Fiat.

But he should better understand 'diversification' or 'spread' or 'arbitrage' - all those things he can do much more with bitcoin .