Kashmir Hill reports from Forbes:
The Bitcoin is a public ledger, and if your identity gets linked to a wallet or address, everyone can see when you move coins. That’s what happened to the feds Thursday. The federally-seized Bitcoin was moved out of the two addresses — here and here — where it had been stored, a huge transfer of funds that was noted by those watching Bitcoin activity such as market data app Zeroblock. The Bitcoin addresses had been notated on Blockchain.info as “Silk Road Seized Coin” and “DPR Seized Coins” (for Dread Pirate Roberts, the pseudonym assumed by Silk Road’s overlord).
“We are moving the Bitcoin in preparation for a sale,” says Lynzey Donahue, a spokesperson for the U.S. Federal Marshals, the agency tasked with selling off seized assets. The Marshals issued a press release, explaining that they are auctioning off the 30,000 seized from Silk Road, but not the coins seized from Ulbricht.
It’s an Ebay style auction with the government asking for real money in exchange for the digital version. The bitcoin will be auctioned off in blocks of 3,000 Bitcoin (or about $1.8 million each) over a 12-hour period in two weeks, on June 27 from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. ET. “Bids will be accepted by email from registered bidders using a form available from the U.S. Marshals Web page,” says the release. “In order to make a bid in this auction, potential bidders must register between the period of June 16 at 9 a.m. through June 23 at noon EDT and make a refundable deposit of $200,000 via wire transfer from a bank account in the United States.”
Interesting that they are holding an "auction" for something that is supposed to have a specific sell price at any given time.
ReplyDeleteBut maybe it's just how they do things? Would they hold an auction if they had a whole mess of confiscated gold and silver?
(Seems unlikely, but I could be wrong. Just because something doesn't make sense doesn't mean some govt agency isn't doing it)