Bitcoin Forum

Do you think U.S. Marshall auction 29,656.51306529 bitcoins will affect price?

Will the winner of that auction instantly sell off 29,656.51306529 bitcoins for a quick profit?
If so, will it affect the Bitcoin's price?

The rules of supply and demand say it will.

There will be additional supply that was not previously there while demand would stay constant.

*affect

I think that it has already affected it, with that dip when it was announced some days ago.

The sell itself will not happen on the exchanges, so it should not represent a sell-force.

BTW, this thread should have a better place in Economics > Speculation.
(you OP can move it yourself with the link a the bottom of your page)

No effect.  The FUD might, but the auction, no.  And if you're a bidder, slide me some of that MarshalCoin for good karma!  Lol...

Yes.....for a very short period of time. Then, like usual after the debris settles, everything will go back to the normal gradual upswing.

Already priced in.

Temporarily yes, think we might see $500-550 at least for a while
Would expect the market to recover pretty fast though

Yes, it will affect price for sure, either directly or indirectly. The direct way would be the auction winners dumping it on the markets or exchanges. The indirect way is people preemptively sell their bitcoins in anticipation for the dump after the auction. This might have already happened with the recent dip. Btw, this thread belongs in the speculation subforum.

is this open auction (bidder can see another bidder price) or close auction (bidder ask price in close paper)?
I think very sure they will immediately dump in exchange for quick profit if they get it for cheaper price than markets
but if they won auction with same price or even higher price than markets, they will hold it for a while, and dump it when right time coming
however, this is not good for market, since someone has many bitcoins can dump it anytime :(

I'm not so sure that the final price will be lower (or quite lower) than the current market price.
In that case, there is no reason to dump them on the market.

IMVHO, the ending auction price could be even higher.
I don't have a precise idea but I think it could be possible if we start to consider, in a random order, the strictly rules of the auctions, the kind of entities that demonstrated their interest, the fact that someone could prefer to buy without moving the market and the fact that these BTC will be sold - for the first time - through a somehow OFFICIAL way.

Anyone who thinks this will not cause a crash is nuts.
Think about it, 30k btc will be sold super cheap, maybe anywhere between 50-80% of the current market price. This by itself won't have an effect, but as soon as the buyers receive those coins they will be dumped on the regular exchanges to take that difference as profit and we will see a big drop.
This drop will in turn cause a panic sell-off, so i suspect we'll end up anywhere between 200-300 USD soon. We can already see it coming down the past days, fear is grabbing a hold of people already even though nothing has happened.

You must be from the future then.

So, they will be sold super cheap? On what information did you base that idea?

So, the coins will be dumped on the exchanges? On what information did you base that idea?

You must've sold out then? Go play outside.

Based on the fact that auctions are expensive, a big chunk of the amount goes to the auction house and i doubt the buyer will pay 15-20% extra for their bitcoins just to be that nice guy.


Based on the fact that most people are greedy, only have their own fat wallet in mind and couldn't care less about others or the world that surrounds them.

30k btc = 8 days mining i dont think prices would change that much, maybe a couple bucks.  Great opportunity for a big whale to buy in i should imagine the interest will be very large at this auction.

1. How do you know they'll use an auction house for digital currency's. Since when does the buyer at an auction pay the up-price, that's usually the cost of the seller not the buyer.

2. So because people are greedy, they'll dump the coins? Most bidders are pro-bitcoin. And even if they weren't, they'd know that they could earn a lot more if they didn't dump them but sell them gradually, IF they wanted to do that. Considering they are mostly pro-btc, there is a high chance they'll hodl. I don't expect any significant dump to happen.

3. I expect the people bidding on the auction to be wealthy enough to see this as a small investment, it's not your average Joe bidding here. Therefore I expect them to have no reason to sell quickly.

Join the club:

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First I'm quite skeptical  that all btc gonna go to a single person/organization..! If someone can pls confirm that. because what I heard is that they are not gonna bid for all  29,656.51306529 bitcoins at once.
 Ok lets take the case of if that happens and a persons succeeds in acquiring all 30kbtc from auction , I won't call it a wise decision to dump all the coins at once. seems totally absurd to me, dumping them according to market and necessity would be wiser.
 One other thing that matters is who wins the auction, as the list is already leaked, there are few good names in it.[although they all are in for money]

Well I don't think that it will have any impact on the price, maybe only some minimal one.
We are having trouble staying above $600 as it is now.

Not at all because if you look at the people who will be bidding it is obvious that they will be hodling, not dumping  :D

This is what I'm thinking. Especially if it is a closed auction, good chance that they might be sold for higher than current price.
Were that the case, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the losing bidders turn to the exchanges to purchase what they didn't win in the auction. Especially if they are truly interested.
In this scenario it could possibly make the price go up.

This auction has given individuals with serious money the idea to invest in bitcoin. That's a good thing.

Critical day, June 27th

https://www.tradingview.com/x/6ajTWgfV

I'm going with the price dip theory, but i'd imagine it is difficult to buy 30k bitcoin quickly if you wanted to, so maybe they will be held due to the fact you couldn't purchase 30k btc in a day without having to progressively pay more per coin?  That could be completely wrong of course, as I can't exactly test that theory.

Yes, it also could happen.
About the speculation on the higher ending price, I've found this other thread with interesting thoughts:
FBI coins could sell for a premium (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=650350.0)


Sure. Take a look, if you didn't already, at who have asked more informations about these auctions:
http://www.coindesk.com/list-possible-silk-road-bitcoin-bidders-allegedly-leaked-us-marshals/ (http://www.coindesk.com/list-possible-silk-road-bitcoin-bidders-allegedly-leaked-us-marshals/)
I don't really think that those people are interested in the auctions for the hope of a dump and some quick money.

i think fear about the auction has been driving the price down. but the bears can't build any momentum -- only achieving slightly lower lows with momentum divergence. so i think it's already baked into the price, and i think we have found a local bottom.

Winner of the auction wont sell it quickly, though price is suppressed now because of this only. I wish this auction is over fast. As per my analysis, price may go down to 500 USD at most.

If price goes up, great.

If price goes down, great.

If price stays around the same, great.

As long as you have a plan in the case of any scenario, you have nothing to worry about.

It depends on the intentions of the buyer(s). If they are bidding so they can attempt arbitrage then they will likely sell quickly, if they indent to invest in bitcoin for some other purpose then they will not.

Its already effected the price. Once the auction is over, then we will get back so semi-normalcy. I dont get how it even effects the price. Its not like we are going to see the coins on any market any time soon...

Now, when the 144k coins go on the block, that will be very interesting. But those wont go up for sale until DPR's litigation is over with. Which could be a few years.

Possible scenarios on June 27th, the day of the auction:

1. Silk Road coins are sold below market value:

Depending on discount rate, btc value will go down accordingly.

2. Silk Road coins are sold at around the fair market value:

It confirms the prevailing btc value, causing more people to buy in, thus triggering a lift-off.

3. Silk Road coins are sold at above the market value:

Bigger effect than #2 above, a huge lift-off.

66.667% chance that BTC will skyrocket on or after June 27th, 2014.

...Except for the fact that one hedge fund already offered to buy the whole lot for 15% under, a few months ago. Why would smaller lots attract a lower price?

my 2 cents.  pre-announcement at least partly responsible for recent decrease.  Likely to see a fairly major dip right around 27th...quick stabilize, and then ka-bam...end of july fireworks (hoping)

there's already a buyer who wants to buy them all .. so i think they will market price buy them or higher.  if they gonne compete for them coins.


I think we will  know the price .. since smaller investors are buying also trough secondmarket and they will know the price..  it will not take long before we know the actual numbers..

and why sell if you got them 50$  cheaper . not worth the trade for big players. ? maybe smaller investors might try to make a quick profit in selling fast en buying back lower. 

but again.. i dont think that kind of investors are buying now..   the one's buying now are ppl who dont want slippage and think more longterm.

I only see whales trying to manipulate this auction news   for a quick sellof  so their bids are filled below market price.  so i'm putting up some bids to catch that potential dip.

so shorterm: possible fast and hard dip with fast  100% retrace.
middterm: very bullish .. who knows start of bubble..       once we break 800 there's no resistance left (volume profile wise)   only the psychological ath...

I predict that the auctions will go for increasing amounts of USD and trigger the next run-up.

Zhis is not the auction you're talking about. One bid, no changes.

Market psychology will value the coins at the price that the auction goes for.  Once such a large amount of BTC is bought at just over market.  Who would sell their BTC for less?

the FIAT side of my body says I certainly hope so. I don't mind if it gets bad enough that it's just another wise hedge :) the miner side says "magic help us" and save the day. But really , it's just 7-8 days of mining , so .......

and the ownership of one, isn't direct volume trading on the exchanges we use .... so? -10% , if they start hitting the market -30% for a bit with a pretty good rebound as it would be pure speculators. they aren't trying to move them to FIAT =p

There is no real reason for any bidder to bid BTC above the market value of bitcoin. There are simply not enough bidders/potential buyers to cause a need to bid above the market price.

One look at the list of bidders, and you know they want the coins... are they going to place a bid 5% under market?  10%?  and risk not getting them?  Or bid 1$ over market and ensure they get them.  They try to buy that amount on the exchanges and it'll move the market.  plus they won't get the free advertising.. being interviewed as the winner of the coins, and publishing the market price.

There is no guarantee that they would win the auction at any price.

The sad fact is that the additional supply being brought into the market will likely not be able to be absorbed by a normal amount of demand.

Most investors in bitcoin do not need to attract attention

Except for the names on their that would want the advertising... Namely Coinbase, Second Market, and Digital BTC... They would love to be interviewed on CNBC and would tweet the shit out of it I would hope.

Well I'm holding until the auction is over, then look to buy some more. I think may investors are thinking like that, that's why the price hasn't changed that much lately (well, not much by Bitcoin-standards anyway.) It's too hard to predict what will happen with the price after the auction, but most people think something will happen. So they rather wait to after the auction to buy in

We've had some good news during that time that normally would affect the price at least a little bit. I think price will go down little bit after the auction then up towards 700 when people notice they didn't get dumped directly on the exchanges. Pure speculation of course but this is the speculation forum after all ;).

Will the winner/winners be disclosed by the way? If so I guess the price could either go up or down directly following the auction depending on the winner: Is he assumed to be a long term Bitcoin believer (holding/investing, price up), don't care about bitcoin but want to make money short term (selling gradually, price down slightly) or after a quick buck/stupid (selling all at once, price down quite a lot)

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