Bitcoin Forum

http://www.coindesk.com/list-possible-silk-road-bitcoin-bidders-allegedly-leaked-us-marshals/


Barry Silbert, CEO for SecondMarket

Luther Lowe, director of public policy for Yelp

Malcolm Oluwasanmi, chairperson of Little Phoenix Investment Group

Fabrice Evangelista, quantitative arbitrage at BNP Paribas

Michal Handerhanm, co-founder and COO of Bitcoin Shop

Dave Goel, managing general partner of Matrix Capital Management

Dinuka Samarasinghe, investment professional

Chris DeMuth Jr., Wrangeley Capital

Fred Ehrsam, co-founder, Coinbase

Jonathan Disner, corporate counsel at DRW Trading Group

William Brindise, head investment manager at DigitalBTC

Michael Moro, director at SecondMarket

Jennifer R. Jacoby, lawyer at WilmerHale

Sam Lee, co-founder, Bitcoins Reserve

Avarus Corporation

PLUS YELP AND BNP Paribas (fourth largest bank in world)

and more 37 total

Avarus in the mix , nice.

I honestly hope SecondMarket / Coinbase get the coins though. No banks please :)

Keep it away from the banks such as the likes of BNP Paribas.

BTW: someone at the Feds should lose his/her job over this. This is so fucking amateuristic. Someone should sue them too. Someone? Everyone on the list

Apparently it's 37 people and they are not all bidders. Anyone that has asked a question appears on the list.

you know how hard it is to fire a federal employee? If they made it past the 1st year probation you'd have to damn near kill everyone in the room and get caught to get fired

Yea, they prolly asked how to get the rest of the 100k+ coins all at once  ;D

I've asked this question before on here, but I'll ask again:

Shouldn't known drug money be burned by the authority that siezes it? Same as a seized kilo of cocaine should be recorded as evidence and then incinerated?

Is what they're doing not illegal to profit from these coins?

Personal experience with this so I can answer that.


No. They usually hold currency til after the trial then the gets put into fund to buy new cop toys. Seriously there is a dare car in my neighborhood that even says on it "paid for by seized drug money" or something to that effect.  They will also take cars, or anything else they think was from profit of drug sales or used in drug sales and auction it.  

Why would they burn the money?

And even then, they'd still make regular on time federal govt pension payouts while you're locked away in a jail cell and ensure you have access to the account. Feds look out for their own, that's for sure.

They'll gaily burn drugs all day long, unless the CIA wants it.

As for money, it seems many a US police department make very nice profits extorting money that they've declared is drug related and keeping it.

I hope I don't need to explain how bad this is :(

Are you suggesting they should burn the bitcoins??? LOL!!!

Yes, send it to a non-existing address.

They can film a cool little tutorial about paper wallets, put one coin in each one and then have a huge bonfire.

In reply to YogoH, I'm not an expert in the law. I suppose it's down to local jurisdiction of who seizes the assets. I was just wondering if this sale was ethical. If the marshals had said they were gonna donate the proceeds to addiction/homeless charity I could see that as a more positive end than profiteering from crimes that were committed on a global scale.

posted on another thread but I'll post it here aswell.

The most noteable to me was the WilmerHale lawyer.  if you take a look at the list of their representative clients, some interesting ones pop up (http://www.wilmerhale.com/about/representativeclients/)

some noteable ones were, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and other places of the sort.  Not trying to create rumors but I think it would be a worthwile assumption that these big companies would use their lawyers to do the bidding on the coins.  Now whether these are companies interested or not is a whole different question.   

Idiots don't even know the difference between cc and bcc... doesn't instill confidence in their ability to wrap their heads around the bitcoin protocol. The winning bidder will probably never receive his/her coins because they'll be sent to Mt Gox or god knows where by accident.

And to our tin foil hat friends out there (because there's always at least one in every room):
So are we to believe that these people -- the federal government -- are the same people who brilliantly crafted the 9/11 attacks, involving thousands upon thousands of insiders across demolition squads, aviation, first responders, along with ordinary citizens .. without any kind of slip up or whistle-blower whatsoever? Right. ::)

Fabrice Evangelista, quantitative arbitrage at BNP Paribas

My bank is rich... they can pay the $16 billion fine to US governement...


http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/06/us-bnpparibas-fines-exclusive-idUSKBN0EH0KN20140606

Now he's buying Bitcoin of of them to make the money back :P

Thanks for the list!

Second Market -- an American online marketplace for buying and selling illiquid assets, including auction‐rate securities, bankruptcy claims, limited partnership interests, private company stock, restricted securities in public companies, structured products, and whole loans.

SecondMarket's participants include global financial institutions, hedge funds, private equity firms, mutual funds, corporations and other institutional and accredited investors.

So they are representing a bunch of interests together

Yelp --"online urban guide" and business review site. *Ok guess they need some BTC*

Little Phoenix Investment Group -  Internet-based investment club and community. So looks like a club purchase for the wealthy

BNP Paribas - I am guessing they are building up some Bitcoin capital for their buddies who want to make Bitcoin based companies and organizations
BNP Paribas has assisted Canadian corporations and institutions in their business development
http://online.wsj.com/articles/france-working-to-reduce-u-s-s-10-billion-fine-on-bnp-paribas-1402838313 (Hmm against bank bids in particular compared to other groups but I guess neutral on them)
U.S. authorities are pushing BNP Paribas to pay more than $10 billion and plead guilty to settle investigations into its alleged transactions with Sudan, Iran and other countries subject to U.S. sanctions, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bitcoin Shop - Self Explanatory reason for bidding

Matrix Asset Management -  Venture capital asset management company (For their entrepreneurs)

Dinuka Samarasinghe - Just because he can XD

Wrangeley Capital - Chris DeMuth Jr is a portfolio manager at Rangeley Capital, a partnership that invests with a margin of safety by buying securities at deep discounts to their intrinsic value and unlocking that value through corporate events. In order to maximize total returns for our partners, we reserve the right to make investment decisions regarding any security without further notification except where such notification is required by law. (The lowball player)

Coinbase - Self explanatory

DRW Trading Group - For their corporate stuff by the looks of it

DigitalBTC - The digitalBTC Wallet is a proposed consumer product that facilitates both digital and real world purchases using digital currency through both a mobile and web applications.

digitalBTC is an established and profitable company providing investors exposure to multiple facets of the Bitcoin industry and other digital currencies. The company is publicly traded on the ASX after a reverse take-over of Macro Energy Ltd (ASX: MEJ). It is the first Bitcoin focused company listed on a major exchange.

Simply put they have a ticker in the Australian stock market must have missed this one
http://www.coindesk.com/digitalbtc-makes-history-australian-stock-market-debut/

WilmerHale - Law firm with offices in Boston, Wellesley, Washington DC, and London, UK, offering a broad range of business and commercial legal services. *lawyers for bitcoin anyone :P*

Bitcoins Reserve - We provide you with simple tasks like watching advertisements, trying new apps, completing surveys, and visiting websites, which allow you to earn Bitcoins (The most intense faucet around haha) I must have screwed up somewhere mumble...

Avarus Corporation - Can't find it seems like a Shell Corporation or Tennis product supplier lols.

So overall, pretty bearish news.. considering the lack of interested parties and lack of variety in them (most of them already BTC related)

I only went off the ones in this article apparently there are 37 more interested parties
Think it was 51 total so if you think about the deposit needed being 200,000 for this auction

There is a current escrow of 10 million two hundred thousand dollars right now and that is before the bidding even begins  8)

And it's not really escrow as the selling party is holding it. This is when the FBI runs off with $10.2M :P

There are some new multibillion dollar players in there, too. Good news IMHO.

Considering they are selling blocks of 300 BTC at this price they would be better off selling the coins than running away with the chump change.
Now if they said the escrow was a non-refundable deposit to enter this auction that would have been a good steal ^_^.


Similar sentiment these coins will not be underbid with that many interested parties with the exception of collusion amongst them lol.

Wait, so all of these bidders (51?) have made the 200k deposit? Then I suppose its not so bad. I was thinking only a half or so actually bid and the rest were "interested"

Bankers and lawyers on the list. UGH!  >:(

Nope. It's purely a CC to people who emailed enquiries about the auction, nothing more. A fella on Reddit who asked them a question received the same email.

where do you get the idea that the government needs to abide by ethics...

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
 ;D

Lol. Seriously? Ok.

The name that caught my eye was Fred Ehrsam's.

As the ultimate insider who can see the market with as perfect vision as any, I consider his desire to buy large quantities of coins as extremely bullish.

I think everybody needs to put this all in perspective...

Go back 12 months and this list would be a rag tag bunch of crypto trolls & holders thats about it

That list looks pretty mainstreet investment city to me  :P

Yes. If you ask me this "leak" just seems too easy to be a simple accident. By dropping all those names the USMS want to maximize the price they get for those bitcoins and the make others know there will be serious money coming to the table

So this means all of them could simply be asking if they could send a really low ball offer, just in case. "Hey I'll buy all of the coins for 10% of their value." "Is there a volume discount?" Why not?

or some of them could genuinely wish to acquire 30,000 coins and appreciate that buying them in the open market, on an exchange they are able to use (basically just Stamp) in a short timeframe, will cost them a lot more than paying say $650 a coin.

No. Because they replied with a PDF of FAQs and that was not one of the questions...

Could you link to that document?

http://www.usmarshals.gov/assets/2014/bitcoins/faqs.pdf

Thank you.

These people are fucking stupid:

It also means they could be asking if they should bid 200% of value  ::)

Thanks I was misinformed then but it does make me wonder on this part

2
5.
Can I make multiple bids?

A bid form allows you to bid on multiple blocks for the same price.

For example, you may place a bid for $X per bitcoin for 5 blocks from Series A. The total bid price in this example would be$X * 3,000 bitcoins * 5 blocks.
This counts as one bid.A single bid form does not allow you to submit multiple bids at varying prices. For example, you may not submit one bid for $X for 1 block from Series A, and $Y for 1 block from Series A.

If you wish to submit multiple bids at varying prices, you will need to submit multiple bid forms. For each bid form, you must submit
a $200,000 deposit. In addition, you must show funds available to cover the aggregate amount of all anticipated bids.

So if you want to bid a few times at different prices for blocks you need more than one form lol.