The US Marshal’s Service is reporting that 11 registered bidders submitted 27 bids, while the first Silk Road Bitcoin auction had 35 registered bidders that put in 63 bids.
The second Silk Road Bitcoin auction for a 30,000 portion of Ross Ulbricht’s personal bitcoins, which he agreed to sell, has finished. USMS (the US Marshal’s Service) is reporting that 11 registered bidders submitted 27 bids. Meanwhile, the first Silk Road Bitcoin auction had 35 registered bidders that put in 63 bids.
After the first Silk Road Bitcoin auction, it was announced that many of the bidders put only in under-market bids. The bidders did not return to the second round knowing the true demand for large portions of bitcoins.
However, the fast growth progress of the Bitcoin industry, even since June of this year, means that large portions of Bitcoin are not as hard to come by as they used to be. For instance, the USMS still has 94,341 bitcoins that it plans to auction off in the coming months. Besides, Australian authorities are also planning to auction off drug-related bitcoins.
A Citi official has recently reported that this month’s Silk Road Bitcoin auction will end below the market price as investors hope to catch a “post-Black Friday sale.” The USMS will soon notify the winner and payment will be due on Monday. Like it happened last time, it is unlikely that the winner of the auction will reveal what price he bought it at.
The rumors from the last Silk Road Bitcoin auction suggest that Tim Draper, the winner of the June Silk Road Bitcoin auction, bought his portion of Bitcoin at an above-market rate. It would be unreasonable to expect the winner of the USMS Bitcoin auction to turn around and dump his bitcoins on the open market.
Most of 11 bidders have previously declared their intention to bid in the upcoming auction either individually or as part of a union. Participants in this month’s Silk Road Bitcoin auction included Bitcoin Reserve, Pantera Capital, Binary Financial, Bitcoin Investment Trust, and Mirror. Besides, Bitcoin Investment Trust, Mirror, and Pantera Capital have also launched unions so that individuals could not afford to bid on entire blocks, but could attempt to get some skin in the game.
This year, the USMS auction was officially opened only for 6 hours, during America’s daytime. Another matter that may have kept bidders cornered is security.
During the first auction, the USMS accidentally replied to an email thread of interested auction participants, which resulted in a flow of potential bidders’ personal emails. The result, as it often is, was a multitude of different phishing emails being sent supposedly to high-worth individuals with an affection for purchasing Bitcoin; unfortunately, one individual fell for the infamous fake blockchain.info support email and lost access to his private key, which caused his bitcoins to be hacked.
Zhanna has a background working for an American multinational food and beverage company as well as at a number of translation agencies serving similar top multinational corporations. She enjoys discovering new cultures as well as learning new languages. She is also a lover of all things fabric and floral ,especially if they are design-related. Zhanna is a graduate of Belarusian State Economic University with a major in Intercultural Business Communications.
