US Marshals Service To Auction $17.5Mil Worth Of Bitcoins
The US Marshals Service is auctioning off 29,656 bitcoins that the government seized from Silk Road, the busted online drug bazaar. Bidder registration closes on Monday, June 23 and the auction will take place on Friday, June 27.
Since this announcement the price of bitcoin has decreased with speculators believing the sale will oversaturate the market with bitcoin. However, 3,600 new bitcoins are mined into the Bitcoin economy every day and the exchange trading volume is extremely volatile, ranging from $1 million to $30 million worth of bitcoin per day.
This will likely be the most closely watched bitcoin sale in history, further legitimatizing bitcoin as a legal asset. The government owns about 144,336 (over $100 million) of seized bitcoins. After this auction Uncle Sam will still hold a large position in the market.
1/Announcement: @BitcoinTrust and SecondMarket’s bitcoin trading desk will be forming a syndicate to bid in US Marshals bitcoin auction…
— Barry Silbert (@barrysilbert) June 14, 2014
