[QUOTE]One of the bigger wallets on the Bitcoin blockchain is going to be emptied in the near future. Back in October, when the feds took down the online drug bazaar Silk Road, they seized the nearly 30,000 bitcoins in its coffers. On Thursday, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the Silk Road case, announced that a judge had signed off on a forfeiture order for those coins. That means they’re now free to get rid of the 29,655 bitcoins, worth about $25 million at Bitcoin’s current $850 value.
“We have not yet determined exactly how the Bitcoins will be converted and liquidated,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Office spokesperson Jim Margolin.
There is no legally certified U.S. Bitcoin exchange, and I doubt the feds want to sell the coins via Mt. Gox, which got in legal trouble last year for operating in the U.S. without a license, or via BTC-e, the mysterious exchange based in Bulgaria. It’s likely that the U.S. Marshals will instead auction off the Bitcoins as if they were Bernie Madoff’s penthouse or a drug dealer’s cars. When the FBI first seized the coins in October, they were worth about $6 million; they’re now worth four times that. This is a bust that keeps on paying off. The proceeds will go to the U.S. Treasury.
[...]
Spokesperson Jim Margolin could not say exactly when the Bitcoin would go up for sale, but the approximately $25 million worth of Bitcoin will be auctioned off soon. This should be interesting.[/QUOTE]
[URL="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/01/16/the-feds-are-ready-to-sell-the-silk-road-bitcoin-kind-of/"]Forbes[/URL]
bet they wholesale under value just to crash the market, here I thought they would have split them up and funded the CIA with it
[QUOTE=Sableye;43564035]bet they wholesale under value just to crash the market, here I thought they would have split them up and funded the CIA with it[/QUOTE]
They don't need extra income now that they have the NSA's insider trading.
Thieves.
e:
regardless of your opinion of bitcoins Silk Road was a good thing and this is just another example of government institutions abusing draconian drug policies in order to enrich themselves.
hope they sell them for dirt cheap.
Why would you even WANT the bitcoin market to crash?
[editline]16th January 2014[/editline]
Other than to be a douche, of course.
[QUOTE=Sableye;43564035]bet they wholesale under value just to crash the market, here I thought they would have split them up and funded the CIA with it[/QUOTE]
They don't even have to sell them cheap, the large amount of availabe bitcoins will crash the price anyways
[QUOTE=soccerskyman;43564116]Why would you even WANT the bitcoin market to crash?[/QUOTE]
Because it's [URL="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/bitcoin-is-evil/"]evil[/URL] and [URL="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-want-bitcoin-to-die-in-a.html"]anarchists are trying to destroy civilization[/URL].
Bitcoin will probably fund the next domestic terrorist group. Also, Bitcoin prevents the Fed from doing their job.
Bitcoins are pretty much just an innocuous pyramid scheme. Kudos to the FBI, can't wait to see what happens.
Yay, sell them to people that go to the next Silk Road.
They can seize those coins and repeat the cycle
Dear FBI, please sell them all for like, $1 per coin. If you crash the market, you'll be able to tots hit the drug market hard.
(I just want bitcoins to crash hard so I can laugh at people that bought them for $1000 a piece.)
I read in the link Eudoxia posted that Libertarians are supposed to love the fuck out of bitcoin because 'such anarchy' but I personally have distaste for it because of the basis of its production giving mass disadvantage to those who enter the market late.
[QUOTE=BFG9000;43564404]I read in the link Eudoxia posted that Libertarians are supposed to love the fuck out of bitcoin because 'such anarchy' but I personally have distaste for it because of the basis of its production giving mass disadvantage to those who enter the market late.[/QUOTE]
It's really just a sign of the currency maturing.
[QUOTE=BFG9000;43564404]I read in the link Eudoxia posted that Libertarians are supposed to love the fuck out of bitcoin because 'such anarchy' but I personally have distaste for it because of the basis of its production giving mass disadvantage to those who enter the market late.[/QUOTE]
As opposed to like, everything ever?
That's like getting mad at people who invested in Apple/MS early
This is a currency, not a stock.
[QUOTE=BFG9000;43564653]This is a currency, not a stock.[/QUOTE]
its neither, though it acts more like stock than it does like currency
regardless, this sale will not be good for the value in the coming weeks
[QUOTE=BFG9000;43564653]This is a currency, not a stock.[/QUOTE]
Yes, but Bitcoin is closer to commodity money than fiat money. On that note: Gold, at first, could be extracted profitably by individuals with basic tools working in frontier regions. Starting a gold mine today requires an enormous capital investment, and a long time to set up.
[QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;43564061]Thieves.
e:
regardless of your opinion of bitcoins Silk Road was a good thing and this is just another example of government institutions abusing draconian drug policies in order to enrich themselves.[/QUOTE]
Well, the US government operates just like a street gang or mafia, only with artificial legitimacy.
[QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;43564061]Thieves.
e:
regardless of your opinion of bitcoins [B]Silk Road was a good thing[/B] and this is just another example of government institutions abusing draconian drug policies in order to enrich themselves.[/QUOTE]
Because what could be bad about a website that makes it easy to hire an assassin or fuel a drug economy that costs thousands of lives every year?
[QUOTE=Trekintosh;43564733]Because what could be bad about a website that makes it easy to hire an assassin or fuel a drug economy that costs thousands of lives every year?[/QUOTE]
you cant hire assassins on silk road
[QUOTE=Trekintosh;43564733]Because what could be bad about a website that makes it easy to hire an assassin or fuel a drug economy that costs thousands of lives every year?[/QUOTE]
Silk Road did not allow hitman postings.
The drug economy costs lives because drug abusers are legally and socially persecuted instead of being treated as patients. Silk Road offered a (relatively) safe, secure, and reputable avenue for purchasing quality drugs, which is much more preferable to in-person deals which carries the very real possibility of getting mugged, assaulted, etc.
Give them to charity.
[QUOTE=RosettaStoned;43565141]Give them to charity.[/QUOTE]
HAHAHAHAHAHA.
That implies the FBI can/would ever do something that helps poor people.
Things don't look too good for the price of bitcoin
[editline]17th January 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;43564061]Thieves.
e:
regardless of your opinion of bitcoins Silk Road was a good thing and this is just another example of government institutions abusing draconian drug policies in order to enrich themselves.[/QUOTE]
Are you retarded? The government doesn't enforce drug laws to make themselves rich
[editline]17th January 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;43564981]Silk Road did not allow hitman postings.[/QUOTE]
Didn't stop the guy running Silk Road from hiring them to get rid of people who stood in his way. Not that that matters because big bad gubbermint etc. etc.
Wait, so the Feds either have to acknowledge bitcoins are real currency, thereby shooting the price [i]down[/i] after liquidating such a large sum of coins on the market in some manner. [i]Or,[/i] the feds just destroy the coins, causing less currency to exist, which could result in the price of the coins to go up. I don't understand the currency exchange at all here so I'm throwing rocks in the dark at it. This could actually be epic regardless of the direction it goes. In theory you can "destroy" a bitcoin by sending them to a script that you can't retrieve or return as true and only false. I don't really know exactly, but it's possible in theory as much as I can tell. I'm leaning to them destroying them in all honesty just because they know what the coins are primarily used for. Acting as the white knight against all things evil and corrupt. But I don't know if it would increase the value or decrease it. It's a strange thing.
I wonder how the takedown actually happened. Did it go as reported? Or did they get help from people whose interests were threatened?
It'd be interesting to see them try to sell it, one of the biggest issues with bitcoin is cashing out.
[QUOTE=BFG9000;43564404]I read in the link Eudoxia posted that Libertarians are supposed to love the fuck out of bitcoin because 'such anarchy' but I personally have distaste for it because of the basis of its production giving mass disadvantage to those who enter the market late.[/QUOTE]
sounds like ur just mad cause u didnt buy bitcoins when it was painfully obvious you could make $$ big money $$
Its probably going to be auctioned
The only place they could sell bitcoin in the US would be something like coinbase, but they can't really do that since coinbase is more like a broker than an actual exchange and besides there is no way in hell a company like coinbase just has $25mil to give out right now.
What I'm interested in knowing in what the auction buyer does with the coins. Theoretically he could just take all 144k to an exchange and then cash out, especially if he bought the coins at a discount to the going rate for some mad profit. This would MASSIVELY crash the price - the price would drop to around 550-$600 per coin just from that single move alone, and you know it'll go even lower from the catostrophic panic such a move would cost.
Of course this would be really stupid to do, instead it'll likely be that the dude (if he wants to sell) will break up the sell orders day by day. It'll still drop the price, and maybe set the price into a downward trend for a long while, but it won't nuke it out of high orbit. This would be smart because then he could basically start a big downtrend of sorts when he's done selling where he buys in a lot again once the price gets low enough.
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