The US Marshals Service opened its online auction today for more than 30,000 bitcoins seized from the servers of the nefarious internet marketplace Silk Road during the 2013 raid on the network. With the auction block open, multiple bundles of the currency worth approximately $17.4 million will be up for grabs in an event that could affect public bitcoin market values. Bidding will take place between 6AM and 6PM on Friday, and winners will be announced by June 30. The e-wallet of currency being auctioned off accounts for about 20 percent of the total amount confiscated during the bust. The remaining 144,342 bitcoins not available for bidding are being held by the FBI in a separate e-wallet that came from Silk Road’s jailed owner Ross William Ulbrecht, more commonly known by his online alter-ego “Dread Pirate Roberts.”
The US Marshals Service has completed its auction of the Bitcoin it seized from the raid and shutdown of alleged online drug marketplace Silk Road. The 12-hour auction consisted of nine blocks of 3,000 bitcoin, and one block of 2,757 bitcoins. At current exchange rates, the auction was valued at $17.7 million dollars. Silk Road was closed in October last year, with alleged founder Ross William Ulbricht charged with a variety of offenses, including narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. Between February 2011 and July 2013, Silk Road is estimated to have generated more than $1.2 billion in business, leading the site into far darker territory than drug sales. The FBI accused Ulbricht of participating in a murder-for-hire scheme, offering the Bitcoin equivalent of $150,000 to murder a Silk Road user attempting to extort $500,000 from the site with the threat of exposing other Silk Road users, though this was left off the complaint due to a lack of connecting evidence. Investment firm Citi Group questioned the wisdom of the auction, and the effect it would have on the currency. In a report it published prior to the auction, analyst Steven Englander said that “the USMS could hire a couple of tech-savvy college kids to dribble its bitcoin holdings into the market, benefiting from the pseudonymity of bitcoin transactions. Selling bitcoin with its somewhat liquid market is not the same as auctioning off a 1998 Chevy with a couple of bullet holes in the driver’s door.”
