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The Feds Are Ready To Sell $25 Million of Bitcoin Seized From The Silk Road

forbes.com

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Re: The Feds Are Ready To Sell $25 Million of Bitcoin Seized From The Silk Road

#21

Post by dclusin »

slg wrote: post #17

The article speculates these Bitcoin will be auctioned off. I wonder if that would be the entire wallet as one lot. Not too many people have the resources and willingness to throw $25 million into Bitcoin outside of the Winklevoss twins and hedge funds. Odds are they might get a good discount, but that might be preferable to the Bitcoin economy than the government selling the coins in smaller lots. 30k coins suddenly…

Only if they try to sell them in a trading venue. Anyone with the bankroll to buy that many probably understands how markets work.

Re: The Feds Are Ready To Sell $25 Million of Bitcoin Seized From The Silk Road

#22

Post by bradleyjg »

justincormack wrote: post #16

Hold on they haven't found anyone guilty in a court yet have they?

Civil forfiture doesn't require a criminal conviction. In fact there's hardly any process at all. Just one more twisted doctrine justified by the War on Drugs.

Re: The Feds Are Ready To Sell $25 Million of Bitcoin Seized From The Silk Road

#23

Post by icey »

sebastienros wrote: post #11

Based on the current price it makes roughly 25K bitcoins, and using the current BUY backlog on MtGox, selling them would push the price back to $550. However such a volume will certainly create a panic wave and it could go below that. If they are clever, they won't put everything on the market like this.

Why would the feds care about crashing BTC? If anything, it seems like it might be a desirable outcome for them.

Re: The Feds Are Ready To Sell $25 Million of Bitcoin Seized From The Silk Road

#25

Post by rjbwork »

alexcroox wrote: post #15
viraptor wrote: post #10

> approximately $25 million worth of Bitcoin will be auctioned off soon At least they won't sell it via usual exchanges in one go. That would make quite a mess... (bringing price down to ~0 for a while before everything rebalances)

Maybe that's exactly what they want to do to this rogue currency...

They might want to, but I think it is illegal to. They have to auction it just like all other siezed assets.

Re: The Feds Are Ready To Sell $25 Million of Bitcoin Seized From The Silk Road

#26

Post by yelnatz »

Alex3917 wrote: post #9

Great, so this will basically be a giant free handout to wall st because no one else will have enough money to bid on a block.

So the feds are gonna give the bitcoin to people who owe them money so they can pay the feds back?

Re: The Feds Are Ready To Sell $25 Million of Bitcoin Seized From The Silk Road

#27

Post by asperous »

ck2 wrote: post #2

So that will depress the price right? Time for some cheap BTC

Actually it might be interesting. Technically yes if they sold at any price they'd burn through the orderbook and the price would crash.

But if they set a flat sell price then that'd make a buy (edit: sell) wall (price can not go above this amount until all 25 million have been purchased).

The sell wall could help stabilize the price.

Re: The Feds Are Ready To Sell $25 Million of Bitcoin Seized From The Silk Road

#28

Post by baddox »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #5
philip1209 wrote: post #3

Based on bitcoin architecture, is it possible to short Bitcoin directly?

It is not possible to short anything directly. Only direct actions are to buy and sell. Options are derivative products that other people offer. They looks at statistical volatility and price their options, such that they make some $ on average. This means you can short bitcoin, just like anything else - you need to find someone offering the service.

When you think about it, even "buying and selling" don't exist as far as the Bitcoin protocol is concerned. There is only creation of new Bitcoin (via mining) and transferring them around. Granted, there is a lot of potential complex functionality based on Script, but as far as I know not much is supported by widely-used Bitcoin clients.

Re: The Feds Are Ready To Sell $25 Million of Bitcoin Seized From The Silk Road

#30

Post by quannabe »

jrockway wrote: post #6
ck2 wrote: post #2

So that will depress the price right? Time for some cheap BTC

I honestly don't think the Bitcoin market is sophisticated enough to react to events like this. Certainly, if the feds really want to sell and someone puts $0.01 on the order books for that size of a trade, and nobody else is around, it could be filled, but I don't see that happening.

Huh? Why would they sell it all at once and crash the price?

They won't.

That is like Warren Buffet deciding he wants to exit a position and dumping tens of millions of shares on the market. No one does that.

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