US Marshalls auction SilkRoad bitcoins

[JorgeStolfi]

I wonder if anyone will actually bid on them.

I guess there will be bidders, yes.  If someone managed to get one lot for 300$/BTC, right now, he would make a nice profit by selling on the open market, even with slippage and falling prices.

There is no cost for bidding and losing. There is paperwork and hassle and freezing 200'000$ for a month; but there are many people, including "professional" auction bidders, who are not scared by those things.

[TopherB]

The price probably all depends on how much they go for and what the person does with them. If he dumps them we could see trouble.

Buying and dumping makes no sense as he is selling such an amount that he is driving down the price as he sells and so will get much less than he paid. Unless 'his' plan is to drive down the price and then buy back in from the panicking "dumb money" and in the end driving the price back up. If that's the plan I'm all for it. I'll end up with more bitcoin (buying low) and the bitcoin will be stronger for having appeared to weather another storm.

Maybe the winner bidder wont have any idea what he's doing? I'm sure whoever wins them though will probably be keeping them as an investment. It'd be hard to sell many of them straight away as the price will go down.

While there may be some lottery winners that haven't managed to lose all of it yet, most people with that kind of coin know what they are doing.

[BetMoose]

People definitely won't get cheap coins this way. It's an auction, they'll probably end up paying more than they would on Bitstamp or another exchange.

___________

SilkRoad coins will be sold above market valueOptions: Yes | No

Lots of factors to consider, including price manipulation ahead of the action.

[BetMoose]

Sorry if you consider it spam Holliday, it's a completely P2P platform so I'm just trying to give people the opportunity to match up with others. This is how prediction markets work, and ideally, if everyone participated, you would have your answer to how much the coins are sold for before they're sold.

[NEM minnow]

I can easily see that some bitcoin companies will want to pick up a lot if they can get them for below market.  Coinbase being one.  They are constantly needing a bigger cold wallet.  It would be good for them to have some padding. 

One thing is for sure.  Whoever buys these aren't going to be buying hotel rooms and cable TV with their bitcoins. 

I wish my bank would give me a 2 million dollar credit line.  I would bid, win, default on the loan, and run away until statue of limitations expired. Hahahaha

[Melbustus]

I wonder if anyone will actually bid on them.

Did you really wonder?

SecondMarket is in:

"SecondMarket and the Bitcoin Investment Trust expect to participate in the auction and will allow others to submit bids for aggregation in the process"

https://bitco.wufoo.com/forms/participate-in-us-marshals-bitcoin-auction/

1/Announcement: @BitcoinTrust and SecondMarket's bitcoin trading desk will be forming a syndicate to bid in US Marshals bitcoin auction...

https://twitter.com/barrysilbert/status/477931080889012224

2/Register here to receive info about how to participate in the bidding syndicate for US Marshals bitcoin auction: http://bit.ly/1lzcWbI

https://twitter.com/barrysilbert/status/477931146030743552

[Alley]

Too bad its a silent auction. No bidding wars.  1 bid is submitted, highest bid wins.

[beetcoin]

is it me or does it look like the FBI wants to give their friends coins on the cheap? it's like they're not going to even try to get the most out of the bitcoins they own.. and are they going to disclose who buys them at what price, or is that private?

[JorgeStolfi]

is it me or does it look like the FBI wants to give their friends coins on the cheap? it's like they're not going to even try to get the most out of the bitcoins they own..

No more for bitcoin than for any other merchanise.  It is not part of their mission to make a profit from sales of seized stuff.

Why do people think that the FBI views seized bitcoins any different from seized cash, gold, stocks, etc?

[BurtW]

is it me or does it look like the FBI wants to give their friends coins on the cheap? it's like they're not going to even try to get the most out of the bitcoins they own..

No more for bitcoin than for any other merchanise.  It is not part of their mission to make a profit from sales of seized stuff.

Why do people think that the FBI views seized bitcoins any different from seized cash, gold, stocks, etc?

FBI guy:  How are we going to get rid of these things.
USMS guy:  How about 10 lots of 3,000 each, highest bidder, silent auction?  That will be the least amount of work for us.
FBI guy:  Sounds good.

[NEM minnow]

is it me or does it look like the FBI wants to give their friends coins on the cheap? it's like they're not going to even try to get the most out of the bitcoins they own..

No more for bitcoin than for any other merchanise.  It is not part of their mission to make a profit from sales of seized stuff.

Why do people think that the FBI views seized bitcoins any different from seized cash, gold, stocks, etc?

FBI guy:  How are we going to get rid of these things.
USMS guy:  How about 10 lots of 3,000 each, highest bidder, silent auction?  That will be the least amount of work for us.
FBI guy:  Sounds good.

That is probably pretty close to what happened.  Those FBI agents don't get a fee, they will get paid the same amount whether it sells high or low.  Like many government employees (actually like most people), they just want to do the least amount of work possible. 

[JorgeStolfi]

FBI guy:  How are we going to get rid of these things.
USMS guy:  How about 10 lots of 3,000 each, highest bidder, silent auction?  That will be the least amount of work for us.
FBI guy:  Sounds good.

Yes, that's is the spirit.   ( A fellow government worker there?   )

Although the dialogue may have been more like:

FBI: We got some seized bitcoins cleared for auction.  You guys know how to handle that stuff?
USMS: Yes, no problem, the auction could not be any easier. Just send the coins, I'll email the address.
FBI: Good! Thanks, bye.

[QuestionAuthority]

I hope they accidentally send them to the wrong address and they keep the winning bidders money. Here's how that conversation will go.

US Marshall Supervisor: Fred, I thought you told me you knew how to work that Bitcoin stuff.

Auctioneer: Yeah, I do. The FBI told me how to do it.

US Marshall Supervisor: Well, one of the winners is bitching that they didn't get the things. They say they tracked them in the blockhead to some guy named Mark Karpeles. Did you type in the code thingy right?

Auctioneer: Oops! Oh well, what are they gonna do sue us.

Background laughter heard from everyone in the room.

[beetcoin]

is it me or does it look like the FBI wants to give their friends coins on the cheap? it's like they're not going to even try to get the most out of the bitcoins they own..

No more for bitcoin than for any other merchanise.  It is not part of their mission to make a profit from sales of seized stuff.

Why do people think that the FBI views seized bitcoins any different from seized cash, gold, stocks, etc?

FBI guy:  How are we going to get rid of these things.
USMS guy:  How about 10 lots of 3,000 each, highest bidder, silent auction?  That will be the least amount of work for us.
FBI guy:  Sounds good.

That is probably pretty close to what happened.  Those FBI agents don't get a fee, they will get paid the same amount whether it sells high or low.  Like many government employees (actually like most people), they just want to do the least amount of work possible. 

as i mentioned, they could have wealthy friends (i mean, come on, they are in the FBI) who could use a little insider info to make profits from buying these bitcoins cheap.

[cyberpinoy]

wondering how the gov. get the private keys from the silkroad owner

\

I was wondering the same exact thing myself, stealing ones wallet does not give you their coins, and a person who is notorious of Silk Road would not just makes things so easily accessible, I think what really happened here is as follows

The US Government bought all those coins when the bitcoins surge began, they have held them until a time appropriate for them to sell them, and needed a way to do so, offered Silk road a plea bargain to agree to their terms (that part is speculation) for silk road to say yes their coins were seized, they are now using this silk road situation to sell the coinsthey bought with taxpayers money without telling them the gamble they actually took with all the tax dollars.

Does this seem to wrong, maybe eveen on the lines of conspiracy, well think about this, 401K plans, what happened there, or even worse yet the stimulus packages, what most people dont understand is both of those situations were exactly the same HUGE gambles with tax payer dollars, buying stocks with your retirement, then loosing it all on your end while gaining like theives in the night on their end, they put your retirement into a market they colluded, and stacked against your own retirement and filled their pockets and the bankers pockets who raised the situation to congress in the first place

the stimulous packages were no different, companies got X amount of dollars in return those companies ahd to give X amount of stocks to be controlled by the US treasury, some worked out well others failed dramatically like all GM and GMC owned stocks failed and fell thru the floor loosing the US tax payers a lot of the money that was given in the stimulus packages.

It was nice to see tho, this bitcoin venture they invested in worked out for the best for them.

[BetMoose]

wondering how the gov. get the private keys from the silkroad owner

\

I was wondering the same exact thing myself, stealing ones wallet does not give you their coins, and a person who is notorious of Silk Road would not just makes things so easily accessible, I think what really happened here is as follows

The US Government bought all those coins when the bitcoins surge began, they have held them until a time appropriate for them to sell them, and needed a way to do so, offered Silk road a plea bargain to agree to their terms (that part is speculation) for silk road to say yes their coins were seized, they are now using this silk road situation to sell the coinsthey bought with taxpayers money without telling them the gamble they actually took with all the tax dollars.

Does this seem to wrong, maybe eveen on the lines of conspiracy, well think about this, 401K plans, what happened there, or even worse yet the stimulus packages, what most people dont understand is both of those situations were exactly the same HUGE gambles with tax payer dollars, buying stocks with your retirement, then loosing it all on your end while gaining like theives in the night on their end, they put your retirement into a market they colluded, and stacked against your own retirement and filled their pockets and the bankers pockets who raised the situation to congress in the first place

the stimulous packages were no different, companies got X amount of dollars in return those companies ahd to give X amount of stocks to be controlled by the US treasury, some worked out well others failed dramatically like all GM and GMC owned stocks failed and fell thru the floor loosing the US tax payers a lot of the money that was given in the stimulus packages.

It was nice to see tho, this bitcoin venture they invested in worked out for the best for them.

You're crazy. There are millions of better ways the government can speculate or invest into BTC.

[cyberpinoy]

You're crazy. There are millions of better ways the government can speculate or invest into BTC.

You are correct, there are many plausible and logical ways for the US Government to  invest in bitcoins and keep the information of these moves public, but when has anyone ever known the US government to do things that were logical?

[unexecuted]

Looks as if we've had some insider trading in the past couple of days

[xiaobei]

Looks as if we've had some insider trading in the past couple of days

Maybe, no one  can  guarantee

[JorgeStolfi]

There are millions of better ways the government can speculate or invest into BTC.

And they have no reason to do so.  Just as they have no reason to speculate or invest in Apple stock or rare stamps.