Bitcoin Forum

So if 30k bitcoins from the current FBI auction of silk road coins has contributed to the bitcoin price crashing hard going down in value - if the FBI win their case and get to sell Ross Ulbricht's 140k bitcoin stash will the bitcoin price literally crash?

Thoughts people?

Anyone have any updates about Ross Ulbricht's case?

What are his prospects of success?

If his chances of success are slim then smart bitcoin traders should be aware that the market could potentially flash crash at any moment depending on the outcome/announcement by law enforcement. We now have a precedent that American law enforcement are eager to sell seized bitcoins and rake in the cash.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Oh, sorry, are we having a serious discussion?

Most likely crashes even harder as the market depth can not support close to 80M usd worth of bitcoin.

Sorry to mention the elephant in the room. Or have I broken the cult rule of the hodlers?

Don't feed the troll.

That's right. Everyone here is a cult member. Branded and the works.

We are blind to the reality that 140k bitcoins are going to be bought for a price and then dumped the market down to single digits. Here is how your theory works.

IE. Current spot price is $550. Government auctions off 140k bitcoins. They sell for 15% below spot (why? because there was an article IN FEBRUARY on the internet about a company willing to buy them for 15% below spot, so they must be sold for that). So that company gets 140k for around $467 a piece.

Then they sell those 140k bitcoins on the market. But since the market only has about 10k bitcoins in depth down to $467, they dump 10k bitcoins for a 1%-15% profit and then dump the other 130k bitcoins for a loss.

So they lose millions of dollars and the price of bitcoin is now <$5.

YES, THIS IS A BRILLIANT CONCLUSION.

Because I responded with BLAH BLAH BLAH I MUST be a CULTIST!

Why, god are people on this forum so stupid?

Notice how the trolls always put every new thread post in the form of some inane question.

Like "Golly jeez paeple, if x happens, do you think that the price will crash to -$3000?  Whatcha think, da herping derp durr herp?"

 no one will buy all 140k at 15% off, since they know that the market cannot support such a large quantity and will surely crash for much more than just 15%... How about you reread your own argument backwards and realise that it may lead to a different conclusion.

One scenario may be:
1) market cannot support such large amount
2) buyers are aware of this and will not offer to pay 15% below market for 140k coins... they arent stupid after all. ...

Your whole argument is based on there being a definite buyer for 15% below market yet you agree that there is no market to support this quantity.

So either there is no buyer or the buyer is really stupid because 140k will crash the markets for much more than just 15% enabling them to purchase the coins for way cheaper.

Edit: this guy is just plain ignorant. There was a group who offered to buy 27k silk road coins for 15% off in february. (price was $550 at the time). It was an offer for 27k coins  not 5 times that amount (140k). For such a large quantity for all you know they may have offered 30-60% off..  http://www.businessinsider.com.au/falcon-global-capital-offers-to-buy-the-fbis-bitcoins-2014-2

welcome to the "speculation" forum. why dont you ban anyone who dares speculate about future events that may affect bitcoins.

Confirmed Troll

If this is what you truly believe then you should leave this forum and never invest in bitcoin. There is literally no reason for you to be here. You aren't here to "save" anyone. So just save yourself.

This all assumes that Ross loses his case
Second that they have his Private Key and that ross did not use a brainwallet

Ok you keep hodling.

This is all a bad dream, this thread never happened, its not real....

Oh, so you are here to "save" people like me.

I make more trading in a day than you do at your job in a year. Go find a smaller sandbox, we don't need people like you here.

You don't get it do you troll?

There are plenty of buyers ready to scoop up any coins the government is willing to auction off. This 15% guy is just one of them. Windjc said there is not enough bids ON EXCHANGES to be able to buy all these coins if they are dumped, not enough of a market to buy the 140K coins that MIGHT be auction off. I agree with everything Windjc said, and nothing of what you said so far.

Also, only american buyers are allowed to bid. They will be subject taxes if they sell within one year, so not only will they lose if they dump on the market, they will have to pay taxes. EVEN IF THEY PAYED 200 PER COIN THEY WOULD NOT PROFIT! SO WHY THE FUCK WOULD SOMEONE WITH THAT MUCH MONEY DUMP THOSE COINS AND LOSE TENS OF MILLIONS?

But wait, theres more! First, they have to find him guilty and prove that every single coin he owned was made off SR. That is going to be very hard for them to do. Last I heard, it was looking like he was going to get off on most of these charges, with only the charges for selling fake IDs to some guy in Canada sticking. The government got what they wanted, which was to shut down SR, confiscate a ton of info on buyers and sellers, and profit (the 29K coins).

Now stop trolling. Don't hate because you got here late! :P

Did I miss something again? When did bitcoin crash hard?

yes, bitcoin market is going to crash, very hard, anyone can come to this conclusion with simple mathematical calculations,
however the holders in this forum will still trying to fool you, if they found out you are in the right sense, they will ask you to leave the forum so they can continue lying to themselves and others,
they are either so afraid of their dreams are dead or trying to fool more people to join them,
how pathetic they are?

I hate to quote and feed the biggest troll of bitcointalk.org but...

Unless we go to $12, my dreams are still alive.

Also, I am willing to give you 10 of my bitcoins if you can provide this simple mathematical calculation that proves the market is going to crash. You can sell them now an profit 5 grand before this so called crash!

I will leave you unignored for a day to provide enough time. Your move!

I'm not sure if you're trolling or just confused but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter.
_______

Even if there was a distinct connection between the auction and the recent dip, it could hardly be called "crashing hard".

From the peak of 615 almost a week and a half ago to the absolute bottom of 555 yesterday, the dip represented less than 9%.

The little dip on the day of the Silk Road bust represented more than 15% and all that led to was dispelling the importance of the bust, reinforcing the strength of Bitcoin and spurring the autumn rally.

When the price dipped by 50% last November, it was just a bump in the road to a new ATH three times as high as the bottom of that November dip.

"Crashing hard" is what it did in June 2011 when it went from 32 down to 2, a drop of over 93%, or in April 2013 when it went from 266 down to 50, a drop of over 81%.

9% is peanuts in the world of Bitcoin where increases are measured in 1000s of %.
_______

If anything, this little dip should serve to dispel the importance of government auctions and lead to a much smaller market reaction to a much larger auction.

I hope that helped clarify things for you. You'd be wise to pay more attention to experienced Bitcoin people and less to noob trolls and johnny-come-lately daytraders.

Ok thanks for that.

I guess I used the wrong term. I meant that it seemed that the auction was a key factor that contributed to the market going down from what looked like $670 to $550. It might still go lower we will only know after the auction.

We cant conclude what this auction will mean for future auctions because:
1) this one hasnt finished playing out yet.
2) a future auction with 5 times the amount of this one might have a completely different effect on the market.
3) other factors eg. who the bidders are etc.

Finally, you said something that had a modicum of reality in it. 1) this hasn't finished playing out yet.

What if we are at $700ish two weeks from now?

crackers and governments and shit having 1224k coins, mtgox 200k, fbi 174k, crackers 850k -> no one can buy them, not at 15% off
simple enough for you?

He was probably exaggerating. However he is correct when he says that anyone who dares post that the price might go down for whatever reason is probably going to get flamed by many members of this forum. Theres some sort of unspoken rule about never predicting that bitcoin might go lower, even temporarily...

Exaggeration is the key word. He doesn't just predict a dip, he calls for a big crash and then rejoices and celebrates every minor dip as if it were a newly discovered cure for cancer or an end to poverty. Every small setback to Bitcoin is treated as a wonderful positive thing. It's as if he hates Bitcoin. No wonder he's almost universally considered to be a troll.

Even many so-called "permabulls" routinely predict temporary price decreases when they are called for. It's a matter of degree.

"If SR gets busted, don't you think bitcoin will crash to ZEROOOO!?!?!"

no, there will be no more up trend but only dead cat bounces, $1200 to $xxx to $600, $600 to $xxx to $400, $400 to $xxx to $180, $180 to $xx to $20 etc..
i know he has lost some money so far and will lose more but this is what's going to happen,
he only wants to hear some lies about "to da moon" "get on the train" "we are just temporarily going down but soon the bull trap will start", otherwise he asks opponents to leave the forum

he only allows people to celebrate/talk about it/point it out/ at every raise but certainly not at dip,
so if he "likes" bitcoin, then bitcoin must raise forever, it can't be "get rich quick bubble" "keep staying at low price/die/be replaced at some day" "be used for high frequency trading/speculators"

so you see JimboToronto's selectively blind logic, he is denying but just telling you the same "don't say the price might go down or bitcoin is not going to the moon for whatever reason, or you will get flamed. the price is going down? no, i don't see it, don't show me, ... ok i see it but it's not true, it can't be, just some stupid weakers dumping cheap coins ... oh no!! the market is crashing but i believe it will raise again!!!! don't agree with me? then gtfo!"

LOLOLOL

Take your meds Faiiiling.

You're too hilarious to put on ignore.

If auction will be successfully, government's will start massive ban BTC in their countries and seize them and trade.

We can only pray, no one will buy those cheap BTC. And all world decide to BAN FBI.

Bitcoin price did crashed 30% once the news of busted become public information. The price recovered an hour later.

I like threads like this. Fudders and all other naysayers just don't seem to have the output they used to... Sad that quality of trolling is so low nowadays, I even predict it's going to crash even lower  :( Stop trolling now, get out and save what you can!!!! I think in around one month we can come back here and see how it went down.

Of course no one's going to buy 140,000 coins just to destroy the market. Of course the price is going to plummet because BTC market types don't have much spine or reasoning so they'll sell en masse.

This guy is on the money. Or something else. One of the two.

Better to spare the whole coins into the US population for free than auctioning it and let some billionaire to buy them all.

Why?

Why the US population and not the world population? They were stolen from the world population after all.

What are you talking about? You think is fair, they just stole BitCoins?

I can hardly see a crash... maybe market is manipulated a bit downward to get cheaper coins in the auction. But we have seen worse.

Btw: Is it even clear that the prosecutors have access to the SR coins?

Even if those were auctioned it would just mean a temporary correction - nothing epic.

ya.ya.yo!

The 140k coins simply cannot be sold, unless the general market volume has significantly grown before such an auction.

Anyone wanting to purchase such volume cannot realistically call a price. The market will crash hard if the auction is carried through and the volume cannot support it. It may crash below any possible price the buyer sets. There is no way to predict how low the market will go in this magnitude of a flash crash.

Bearing this in mind and then again, the market will probably not crash having realised the rationale above (noone will buy the full number of coins if trading volume isnt high). ;) They may pull off sales of a small amount of the coins though. Which again will not affect prices.

Another thing: maybe if US Marshalls change the rules of the auction: "small" lot sizes as we see on this auction round + any one bidder cannot buy more than x number of lots. The last part will also reduce potential market damage, and increase the chance of a successful sale.

they were stolen from ONE american citizen, not the us population or the world population.

you're the one who makes absurd claims that never come near reality, not him, not anyone else. you.

Those 140k coins aren't going anywhere for a long time. They will tied up in the courts for years, and this case to say the least is very complex. To get an idea of just some of the issues here, take a look at the Free Ross Ulbricht site: http://freeross.org/ (http://freeross.org/) When some time in the future the court cases are finally resolved and the prevailing party decides to sell it is likely they will have an impact on the market. It is also possible this impact is bearish and significant. The trouble for a bear trying to play this is that the crash could be from say 1,200,000 USD per BTC to say 600,000 USD per BTC. So a bear selling at say 560 USD per BTC would be out of luck.

The wheels of justice move very slowly and provide ample time for the slaughter of many a bitbear.

I hate to say this out loud - but I had this scary thought...

This would actually be a cheap investment for the banking system if they collectively thought that doing this was enough to kill bitcoin forever as a competitor.

Given current market volatility and liquidity depth, I imagine a large tranche of coins like this is more likely to sell at below market price than the 30K SR coins being auctioned in next few hours. A 50% discount to market would not be out of the question for 140K coin block.

But let's assume for arguments sake (and to keep my maths easy), that they fetch $500 each. So 140K coins would be $70M. Even at market ($600) it's only $84M worth of coins. A lot to you and I maybe, but a drop in the ocean to banks... after all they can simply create the money!

I can imagine a cartel of 10 or 20 large banks chipping in say $10M each, buying the 140K coins and then dumping them onto the market over a short few days or weeks to hammer the Bitcoin price down to $xx level or lower. Protect their monopoly on the banking system and write off any loss to minimise taxes - it's a win-win for the banks, isn't it?

I'm bullish on bitcoin and usually stay away from tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories - but this scares me...

There must be a hole or two in this thought bubble - anyone??
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #joL4QKTu8VqQATxq

That would be just the banks pissing money away. Dropping 140K coins probably will make the price dip for a bit. But it will recover quickly. No one in their right mind would do that.

The most efficient way for banks to deal with Bitcoin is to jump on board.  The big threat to banks is the use of Bitcoin as a payment system, not the use of Bitcoin as a store of value.  The only way to kill the former is to ensure massive volatility forever.  It's just not profitable to attempt this.

The flaw is that by the time the legal cases are sorted out the BTC/USD rate could very easily be way above 500 by a few orders of magnitude. I would suggest reading the defence submission here http://www.coindesk.com/ross-ulbricht-attorney-irs-guidance-motion-dismiss-charges/ (http://www.coindesk.com/ross-ulbricht-attorney-irs-guidance-motion-dismiss-charges/) first and the many complex legal issues it raises. If anyone is prepared to write a call option on BTC/USD with a strike price of 500 USD for the duration of this trail and any subsequent appeals I may be interested, provided of course sufficient collateral is provided.

Coindesk has copied my post:

June 27, 2014
"In any case, the elephant in the room is the rest of the stash, the remaining 144,000 bitcoins seized from Silk Road."
http://www.coindesk.com/citi-examines-potential-impact-silk-road-auction-bitcoin-price/

those coins will be sold off-exchange, so it has no price influence.

If they are being used, they will eventually end up the the eco system and in the exchange.

yes it does,.. indirectly and with latency, but it does: the off-exchange sale satisfies a demand that would otherwise be present (in some way) on the exchanges.

It's all connected.

It is easy to work out.

The effect of these coins being stolen by the FBI was to temporarily reduce the effective total money supply. This is equivalent to deflation and would have generated an increase in the price (all things being equal). The effect of them being sold by the FBI is to increase the effective total money supply. This is equivalent to inflation and will generate a reduction in the price (all things being equal).

However, the effect should be minimal. 140k coins is  about 1% of the total supply, so all things being equal the price of BTC relative to dollars would fall by no more than 1%.  Of course short term effects due to panic, FUD etc (e.g. the OP) might be greater, but that has nothing to do with the fundamentals. 

Ah, you are right.

This all depends on how much demand there is off-exchange, which is always difficult to gauge. But it does seem that Barry Silbert, Pantera, some others have been loading up. Whale accumulation style. And Circle gonna need a lot of coins....

Noone can predict the future in that case, whales can do as they please, but its important to observe the market and try to figure out where the pressure is aplied, and with what reason.
That way it is not important will the market price go up or down, you will allways have your share.

Coin being sold off have influence on market regardless of where they are being sold off.

The person buying the coins could then sell them on an exchange but the initial transaction from the government to the buyer will not affect prices directly but rather indirectly if there is news/rumors/etc.

... but how can one use this to trade now, not 2 years, 5 years, etc. down the road when these court cases eventually get settled?

The 144,000BTC will be auctioned if the FBI wins the civil trial and it may be bought up by someone who wouldn't have bought that many bitcoins on the market

In addition it has been priced in already

exactly,it will take years to auction These Coins.
since they were auctioned off-exchanges like the recent ones,they will not effect the market.
Let alone the spot Price will be much higher than now,as we all suppose
Let`s talk about Ross`s bitcoins in a few years

If we are lucky, the US Marshal will not need to sell them by the time Ross's bitcoin ownership is sorted out.
They will just use them to buy stuff needed by the government, or could be used to pay back some of the Federal Gov. debt.

but this will take time.Won`t happen in a few months.

Well hopefully by the time the legal cases are done this specter will be forgotten for a while
In the meantime bitcoin will have grown even stronger

Roger Ver Set to Donate 165K+on Twitter For Ross Ulbricht’s Defense. (USD not BTC)  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=680466.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=680466.0). This will ensure years of litigation while the bitcoins will 1) Remain tied up in the courts and 2) Keep appreciating in value.

By the time this litigation is over the 144k BTC could even be worth more than the official US government gold reserves!

As far as I can tell, the price has not "crashed" due to the auction...

But that was only the 30K SR coins. Up next for auction will be the bigger +140K stash if Ross is convicted. He denies being DPR so technically the coins are still his.

Is that the defense he is going to use in court?

Sound like a good defense as it will be extremely hard for the government to prove DPR identity.

I would say small and getting smaller as the legal regulations around Bitcoin are getting put into place
The only chance he has to win this is if he can argue its his right to give out the Private Key and they stole it from him unfairly lol.

Yah he is pretty pawned, the US treats Bitcoin as legitimate property now that is sellable which they proved with the Silk Road Auction so they have pretty much already proven that it is an asset of theirs, and Ross would lose the legal case that he was planning on arguing about it not being recognized as having value so pretty boned.

I guess you can be rich and then lose it all lol.

Not entirely sure the US Marshalls will be auctioning off all 140K bitcoins at once.  More than likely I suspect they will release them in batches over time.  At least if they are smart they will.

But yeah, obviously bitcoin could go down (a bit) right after the sale of these coins whether in batches or not (moreso if in a single batch)...but as bitcoin has shown us time and time again she will once again rise from the ashes barring some cataclysmic event.  Truthfully I'm more worried about fuck-tards like Isis now asking people to donate to their brutal cause in bitcoin/darkcoin than I am the 140K bitcoins the Marshall's are holding.  All it will take is one serious terrorist episode taking place on US soil that can somehow be proven to have been funded either partially or in full with bitcoin or some crypto and I believe they would subsequently launch a concerted effort to crush confidence in it.

Regardless, one participant did purchase all ~30k coins in the most recent auction without any major disruption to the market. The price did fall prior to the auction, however this was driven by speculators.

And even the 140k isnt that much. Well, at least compared to 650k still missing from Gox. So basicly like 5% of the coins in the hands of one crook or gang.
How come there is no news on those? With log files and block chains you would expect some news by now.

The lost gox coins, if it is true that they were lost with malleability then were lost to many of gox's customers over a long period of time, and it is likely that most of them were lost years ago when bitcoin was sub $5 per BTC. 

I suspect that people with lots of money are all too aware that these coins will be auctioned off (within the next year) and are not willing to invest until this issue gets resolved. No point having the price rise exponentially and then get demolished by the auction.

Given how well the 30K coin auction went I am much less concerned about this one, especially since it may not ever happen.

Yea and it will not happen soon, since the government has first to win the lawsuit against Ulbricht before auctioning them.

Not only that but the net effect of the price was mostly neutral so I wouldn't really be worried.

Actually spent some time thinking about this case read another thread
And my new concern is that this does not set off a precedent to confiscate assets from people without a warrant.

I still don't get it how the fuck did they get the private keys of those coins?! It's pretty default to encrypt the private keys! Why would Ross give them the password? Does not compute.

keylogger.

Even if you are being sure of you not having a keylogger, I think it's still a good idea to use virtual keyboards, I do that, and I admit that i feel a little bit extra paranoid doing so, but also extra safe. And thats being a poorfag, if I was a super rich dude, I just don't get how these guys aren't keeping their shit on offline computers for starters.

It still asks the password to send the coins. How come DPR was so stupid that he didn't make any cold storage? It just doesn't fit into my head.

As I said all along, he will not be found guilty.

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/feds-silk-road-investigation-violated-privacy-law-sites-alleged-creator-tells-court/

This is highly interesting! But come on, why isn't the market reacting even more positively? Maybe they will soon be trying to track down Draper and force his Bitcoins off of him again, as well :D In order to give them back to their previous owners :D

If you notice they only sold 30k btc which is a wise move to diversify that amount of BTC.   Seems pretty bullish while they are holding the rest.

Na they are in a lawsuit to get access or to use the rest of Ross and his Bitcoins still.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140710/06513427836/judge-not-impressed-ross-ulbrichts-bitcoin-isnt-money-defense.shtml

I don't think privacy defense going to work well in his case.

Even if it doesn't stick its highly likely that because of this the prosecutors will have to share the big secret - how they got access to the Silk Road servers.
 
They've been keeping that a BIG secret up to now. It's possible they did something illegal to gain access and if they did it's a high possibility the case will be dismissed due to the "fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine": http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

If the charges do not stick, I think it will be because the government is not willing to share how the found the servers overseas, or because they used illegal means to find the servers. This very well could be a case that tests the NSA's data collection methods in the supreme court.

It will be an interesting court case regardless, in a sense the result of this case will impact a lot more than the result of a drug raid but venture into data collection and privacy rights, which could be used in further cases against other individuals in unrelated cases.

Most arguments are simply word-salad uninterpretable when you read them backwards.  I think you've got to read them forwards and then evaluate in that direction.  :)

Even if the government did something illegal, will the judge really let Ross walk free?

If he is allowed to walk free, that will set an example to all the illegal and drug lord out there not to fear the government.

They would have to because the evidence couldn't be used against him if it was obtained illegally and you cannot convict a man without any evidence, he is innocent until proven guilty and you can't prove him guilty with illegally obtained evidence.

Drug dealers wouldn't not fear the government. The FBI would simply do everything by the book next time they catch someone doing similar.

He was simply 'lucky' this time I guess. They wouldn't go to unreasonable length to convict him. I bet the evidence was already quite a stretch and they knew it. They risked it and it didn't work, it wasn't recognized. That's the way it works.

Oh he hasn't won the battle yet! Just to note: he has only made an argument. He is still in jail and still being charged, nothing has changed yet, we have to wait to see what the FBI's repsonse to this will be.