Australia to sell £8m of seized bitcoins

[alyssa85]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36412487

A collection of bitcoins worth about £8m, which had been confiscated by police in Australia, will be auctioned off in June.

The 24,518 bitcoins will be sold mostly in blocks of 2,000 - each with a value of about £680,000.

Ernst & Young, the firm organising the auction, said the bitcoins had been "confiscated as proceeds of crime" but did not elaborate on the case.

One expert said the authorities had chosen a "safe" time to sell.

Australian newspapers have previously reported that 24,500 bitcoins were seized by police in the state of Victoria in 2013, after a man was arrested for dealing illegal drugs online.

It looks like they waited for the price to rise before setting up the auction...

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[r0ach]

You're a known Ethereum scamcoin shill that doesn't want your scamcoin to implode from Bitcoin rising, so now that everyone knows why you made this post, here's how things actually work:

The price of BTC will be pumped even more to make auctioneers pay top dollar for the coins to prevent them being able to buy and immediately sell for a profit.  Auctioned coins typically also sell for higher than market rate in the first place, so your propaganda only works against people who are completely new to Bitcoin and have never seen how an auction plays out.

[talks_cheep]

From my objective point of view, quite different from the lens of cockr0ach who's a known bitcoin bulltard with racist weltanschauung, this auction by Australian gov't will cause price to drop at the time of the auction. One bit of good news is Australia becomes the 2nd world gov't to recognize bitcoin as a legal commodity, if not a currency. By bestowing legal status to bitcoin, their auction will ultimately result in bitcoin price going up in the long run.

[Oralmat]

You're a known Ethereum scamcoin shill that doesn't want your scamcoin to implode from Bitcoin rising, so now that everyone knows why you made this post, here's how things actually work:

The price of BTC will be pumped even more to make auctioneers pay top dollar for the coins to prevent them being able to buy and immediately sell for a profit.  Auctioned coins typically also sell for higher than market rate in the first place, so your propaganda only works against people who are completely new to Bitcoin and have never seen how an auction plays out.

Very well explained. Auctioned and hype coins will no doubt will get a short term benefit from this bitcoin price rise and attempts like the OP did to create panic for bitcoin price rise is of no use. Even if people pay for Auctioned coins, it will still result in more increased rate for bitcoins and thats how the auction market works in crpto currency.

[Bokelka]

I think the £8m coins will not affect the bitcoin price too much. It is much smaller than the daily trading volume.

[log2exp]

Any info on how much was the bid?

[gentlemand]

The US marshal auctions didn't release any price details. No reason why the Australian government would either. The buyers might and those who didn't win might reveal their bids but that's up to them. I wouldn't bother.

[Bokelka]

The US marshal auctions didn't release any price details. No reason why the Australian government would either. The buyers might and those who didn't win might reveal their bids but that's up to them. I wouldn't bother.

The market cap of Bitcoin is much larger now. The Austrilian auction is too small to make any significant impact.