Edited: 21:15 GMT to reflect the news that Tim Draper has won 2000 BTC has now been confirmed
The U.S. Marshals Service has completed the second auction of bitcoin seized from Ross Ulbricht, the alleged owner of the original Silk Road. Announcements from winners are still thin on the ground, however following an unconfirmed announcement from Sydney Ember of Deal Book, Bloomberg have now confirmed that Tim Draper has won 2000 of the 50,000 on offer. A far cry from the June auction where he outbid all others, taking home 29,656 BTC.
Tim Draper, who swept the first Bitcoin auction in June, says he won just one block of 2,000 Bitcoins in yesterday’s auction.
— Sydney Ember (@melbournecoal) December 5, 2014
Compared to the last auction there have been few updates following the auctions closing time, though Dan Morehead of Pantera Capital confirmed and Barry Silbert of Digital Currency Group both confirmed their participation with Silbert announcing on Twitter that his syndicate had placed bids for 124,000 and Morehead announcing that Pantera had bid below the market value, a risky move considering that Draper’s winning bid in June was supposedly above market value!
Results of our US Marshals bitcoin syndicate: Bids received – 104 BTC quantity bid – 124,127 Winners notified by USMS today
— Barry Silbert (@barrysilbert) December 5, 2014
Bidding closed for US Marshals #Bitcoin auction. Pantera placed bids below the market. Results out tomorrow by 2pm PST. Probably earlier.
— Dan Morehead (@dan_pantera) December 5, 2014
The USMS reported that the turn out for the second auction was much smaller than the previous with 11 registered bidders submitting 27 bids, down from the 45 of the first. Many have speculated about why there has been less interest with theories ranging from seasonality, a shorter bidding window, more people bidding in syndicates and that buying large blocks of Bitcoin is less difficult than it used to be due to new OTC services & brokers.
There are still another 94,000 BTC to be sold which is another reason that many may have held off for the time being, waiting to bid on the next auction.
We’ll update this space as and when more information comes to light.