The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) has recently announced the results of its third auction for another set of Bitcoins confiscated from the Silk Road marketplace.
The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) has recently announced the results of its third Silk Road Bitcoin auction, which took place on Thursday, March 5th, 2015.
According to Lynzey Donahue, USMS spokesperson, two winning bidders took home the bulk of the Bitcoin, with one anonymous participant winning 27,000 Bitcoins and the other one – 20,000 Bitcoins.
The third winner – Bitcoin exchange itBit – took home just 3,000 Bitcoins. The company was founded in 2012 as a global exchange for institutional and retail investors. It has offices in New York City and Singapore.
The USMS spokesperson didn’t comment on the price of the winning bids. However, at current market value, the three winners’ packs of Bitcoins are worth $8 million, $5.9 million, and $0.9 million respectively.
According to Reuters, Bitcoin was up 1.8 percent at $292.19 on Tuesday, which put the value of the 50,000 bitcoins auctioned at $14.6 million. At the last auction the price of bitcoin was around $600.
Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of SecondMarket Inc., Dan Morehead, founder and CEO of Pantera Capital, and Kardashev Capital were among 14 participants who submitted 34 bids for the Bitcoins.
According to Kardashev Capital, whose bid of $221.51 per bitcoin was approximately 17 % under the market value of the coins, they did not win any lots. Bloomberg reported that SecondMarket also failed to win any blocks of bitcoin.
The third auction started on Thursday morning and lasted for six hours. All the 50,000 bitcoins were divided in 20 blocks: 10 blocks of 3,000 bitcoins and 10 blocks of 2,000 bitcoins. Like in previous auctions, those who had any connections to Ulbricht or the Silk Road were not allowed to take part in the auction. To participate in the auction, the bidders had to prove their identities and show that they have enough money to make a deposit before placing a bid.
The auction attracted 14 registered bidders who placed a total of 34 bids for 50,000 Bitcoins seized from Ross Ulbricht’s computer, a slight growth in participation from the last Bitcoin auction. That auction was held in December 2014 and attracted only 11 bidders who made 27 bids. No one of two come close to the first Silk Road Bitcoin auction in which 45 bidders made 63 bids.
For the moment, the personalities of the winners remain a secret, and the USMS is not releasing any information. “We only confirmed winners’ names in the past if they voluntarily came forward,” Donahue explained.
In previous auctions the winners revealed themselves: venture capitalist Tim Draper took home all 30,000 Bitcoins in the first auction, in the second auction, he won just 2,000 Bitcoins, while Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT) won the remaining 48,000 Bitcoins.
At the moment the government has only 50,000 Bitcoins to go before it will have auctioned off all the Bitcoin seized during the outrage of the Silk Road in October 2013.
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