Couldn't they just "destroy" [the SR bitcoins], as they do for illegal stuff like drugs ? (send them to a random address and not store the private key)
The fact that they sell them instead of destroying them has a strong meaning.
Bitcoins by themselves were never declared illegal, and by allowing trade etc the USG has already made that clear. Moreover the IRS has already declared them property with value (hence taxable), so they could not destroy them -- they would be destroying valuable
public property.
That is a point that people seem to miss: the philosophy behind govenment auctions. Any seized property belongs, by right, to the US citizens as a whole; the government is supposed to be merely its custodian. The sale of seized property exchanges it for dollars; these dollars then belong to the US citizens as a whole, and therefore are collected by the Treasury or other government branch, suposedly to be used for the public good. The government's motivation for exchanging property for dollars is that dollars are easier to manage and use rationally than random property.
The exchange has to be done by public auction to ensure that no citizen gets an undue advantage over other citizens.You should know better. Asset sales get outsourced.
Such corrupt.
Big grabs.
This from the Madoff asset sales, which had even more spotlights on it at the time than bitcoin does now:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/nyregion/auditors-find-chaos-in-us-marshals-asset-sales-record-keeping.html?_r=0The lack of basic records, including final sale data, made it impossible to determine whether the Marshals Service properly valued or sold the assets, which sold for $1 million to $49 million, according to the report....assets were sold without public notice or competitive bidding and that Mr. Briskman assessed the value of certain assets and found buyers through his business contacts.
The thing with bitcoin is that any transfer becomes public record forever.
We get our audit. "basic records" come built in.
If only all liquid assets which required auditing were on a block chain...
He thought he could get away with this scam, no jail time, because dollars.
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