Silk Road Bitcoin hoard sold in US!

Posted by: DeepDotWeb

June 30, 2014

Update From Coindesk: 

The US Marshals Service (USMS), the federal agency tasked with managing the auction of more than 30,000 BTC seized from defunct online black market Silk Road, has released new data about Friday’s event.

The agency told CoinDesk that 45 registered bidders participated in the event, and that 63 bids were received over the course of the auction, which ran from 6am EST to 6pm EST on 27th June.

The USMS suggests that more information about the auction could be forthcoming, though the agency was vague about what it would ultimately release.

A spokesperson told CoinDesk:

“The award process is ongoing, so we do not have the final number of winning bidders yet.”

The number of confirmed bidders in the auction, however, continued to grow today, with The Wall Street Journal indicating that Boston-based bitcoin financial services company Circle had participated.

With the news, Circle joins other notable names in the bitcoin industry as confirmed bidders including Barry Silbert’s investment vehicles SecondMarket and Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT), BitFury investor Binary Financial, bitcoin-based hedge fund Pantera Capital and online retailer Bitcoin Shop.

As it was published at the BBC article just now:

The auction of 29,000 bitcoins seized during a raid on the Silk Road internet marketplace has been completed.

The sale of the coins, worth about $18.7m (£11m), was carried out by the US Marshals Service on 27 June.

The Silk Road shut down in late 2013 following raids by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies which said it was trading in illegal drugs.

The auction ran for about 12 hours and the successful bidders are due to notified on 30 June.

The seized bitcoins are part of the civil forfeiture and criminal action brought against Silk Road owner Ross William Ulbricht.

The bitcoin hoard was sold by being split into nine blocks of 3,000 coins and one of 2,657.

The US Marshals declined to name who had put down bids for the coins although earlier this month the agency accidentally leaked a list of some of the buyers in an email update about the sale.

The Winning bidders will be announced today at 5pm USA time, we will update this info once it will be published.

Updated: 2014-06-30