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For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

usmarshals.gov

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Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#351

Post by GFischer »

maaku wrote: post #344
GFischer wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the "not completely fungible" part. It is apparently hard to trade that many bitcoins for the equivalent amount of government-backed currency or goods. To be fair to Bitcoin, it's not the only "currency" with that problem... during the Argentinean crisis, many local governments paid their workers with alternative currencies ("patacones" and others) which rapidly devalued. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patac%C3%B3n_…

You're talking about liquidity not fungability. But regardless Bitstamp's 24 hour volume yesterday was 32,799 BTC. Trading that much bitcoin is not really a problem.

I stand corrected :) both about fungibility and about the trading volume.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#352

Post by GFischer »

andrewla wrote: post #330
GFischer wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the "not completely fungible" part. It is apparently hard to trade that many bitcoins for the equivalent amount of government-backed currency or goods. To be fair to Bitcoin, it's not the only "currency" with that problem... during the Argentinean crisis, many local governments paid their workers with alternative currencies ("patacones" and others) which rapidly devalued. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patac%C3%B3n_…

I think you mean the liquid part, not the fungible part.

You're right, I stand corrected :) .

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#353

Post by jarrett »

dragonwriter wrote: post #108
adestefan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government doesn't see Bitcoin as money. Instead it's just selling seized property like it always does.

> The government doesn't see Bitcoin as money. I think the money in GP refers to the other side of the trade -- if you sell an asset on an exchange, you are going to then have money (received from the purchaser) that is yours on that exchange until you are able to extract it. Ideally, that would be trivial, but that hasn't always been the case for BTC exchanges (Mt.Gox being a notable example for an extended period o…

Yes, that's what I was referring to. Instead of "money," perhaps I ought to have said "value." Analogously, if I had a pound of gold, and I gave it to a broker to sell for me, I'd be trusting that broker with my "value."

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#354

Post by nilved »

rplnt wrote: post #290
orik wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the coins were seized on Silk Road servers they didn't belong to anyone at the time but the Silk Road. We can argue the merits of returning the coins to the last previously associated wallets; but I don't think the U.S. Gov has any intention of returning drug money to drug buyers the same way they wouldn't give gun money back to arms buyers.

A very stretched example follows, be warned: An online shop selling clothing also happens to sell firearms illegally. Its assets are seized. What about money from pending orders for the clothing? It seems to me it's obvious in this case. Couldn't SR users start a class action lawsuit against gov for seizing their assets stored on SR servers? This is assuming not everything sold there was illegal (this might be wrong)…

Everybody who used Silk Road knew that the site was illegal, and everybody who used Silk Road willfully paid a commission to Ross. IANAL, but even if you only bought legal goods from Silk Road, you were still aiding and abetting a drug market.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#355

Post by danielweber »

euroclydon wrote: post #347
rayiner wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I think civil forfeiture laws are applied without sufficient discretion in drug cases. And it's troubling that they apply not just to illegally-obtained assets, but those that are "instrumentality of a crime." That said, there's an important wrinkle here that you're glossing over, and that is usually glossed over in discussions about civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture is not confiscation of your property…

Here is a great NYT piece on how civil forfeiture is abused in one Texas town: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_...

(nit: NYT != New Yorker)

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#356

Post by maaku »

marme wrote: post #257

What people should be more concerned with is the fact that the government is selling off someone elses property before they have even been convicted of a crime. Dread pirate roberts plead not guilty and has still not had a trial yet. He has not been convicted of any crime so if these are his coins they are selling them before the trial is even finished

This has nothing to do with the man accused of being DPR. This is like the police showing up to a drug deal and both the buyer and supplier scattering and miraculously getting away. The police then take the coccaine and cash onto a giant podium and ask "This belong to anyone? No? We're going to claim it if no one does." Now it is legitimately government property.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#357

Post by saganus »

drcode wrote: post #349
danielweber wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you compare to his other comment on this page, I'm pretty sure he's joking, and taking the "this is actually good news" meme to its natural crazy end.

No, I actually am pretty bullish on bitcoin at the moment, though who can say what will really happen.

That's kind of why I asked. Although I have no Bitcoin assets, if I did I was thinking that it could go either way.

It could help legitimize the coin, for some definition of legitimize, or it could tank the price if people feel a sizable chunk of those coins are going to be sold at discount.

It did tank ~10%, but maybe we will see a rally in the weeks to come?

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#358

Post by ceallen »

knz42 wrote: post #177
Ologn wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no conception of how to value the underlying asset They have no conception of how to value the underlying asset because the underlying asset has absolutely no value. Bitcoin is one of the purest scams that has ever been conceived. Even subprime real estate, pets.com stock, dutch Tulip Bulbs etc. had some value. You're buying and selling a hash - a number. It's absolutely worthless. That people are being suckered in…

In all fairness, the paper on which $100 bills are printed is quite worthless as well. I think ever since people have stopped using gold and silver bullion (after arrowheads and knives) as currency items, there has been this consensus that money has the value that people give to it, not the value of its material (or, in BTC's case, immaterial) representations.

Not quite. USD will always be accepted by the United States Government. If you live in the US, you'll probably owe them taxes no matter what you're payed in, and as such, will always have some need for USD, and USD will always have some intrinsic value of "enough of this will keep the IRS from arresting me".

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#359

Post by wyager »

maaku wrote: post #356
marme wrote: post #257

What people should be more concerned with is the fact that the government is selling off someone elses property before they have even been convicted of a crime. Dread pirate roberts plead not guilty and has still not had a trial yet. He has not been convicted of any crime so if these are his coins they are selling them before the trial is even finished

This has nothing to do with the man accused of being DPR. This is like the police showing up to a drug deal and both the buyer and supplier scattering and miraculously getting away. The police then take the coccaine and cash onto a giant podium and ask "This belong to anyone? No? We're going to claim it if no one does." Now it is legitimately government property.

Except for that people are claiming ownership of some of the SR funds. There was an article posted here recently about a guy in the UK trying to recover his Silk Road funds.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#360

Post by ThomPete »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #310
ThomPete wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no value is inherrent and it makes no sense to talk about it from that perspective. You are confusing historical with universal facts.

No value is inherent? The universe, say, has no value? I can certainly see possible frameworks in which this is true but they don't really appear to be useful in assessing relative worth. If we agree that things which can be utilised in order to provide gains in efficient production of fulfilment, happiness, [sense of] achievement, etc., then it seems that there are many things with inherent value, no? For example, G…

The point is that if gold has inherent value so has the bitcoin-protocol and it's a useless distinction to try and claim that one has and another hasn't.

For instance for remittance Bitcoin has immense value compared to for instance gold.

Context defines value not the thing itself.

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