The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Silk Road Bitcoin

US gov to auction Silk Road founder 'Dread Pirate Robert's' booty with 50,000 Bitcoins up for grabs

Author

By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

November 18, 2014 | 2 min read

The US Marshal service will auction off 50,000 Bitcoins seized during the arrest of darkweb blackmarket, the Silk Road’s, founder last year.

Bitcoins are a flourishing but unregulated crypto-currency

Ross Ulbricht ran the site as ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ hosting a marketplace where crypto-currency was exchanged for a range of illegal services such as guns, drugs and even hits. Upon his arrest in October 2013 for money laundering and computer hacking, 140,000 Bitcoins were seized.

The government has decided to host a blind auction, distributing the coins in ten blocks of 2,000 and ten blocks of 3,000.

At the time of publication, a single Bitcoin is worth £240.59 with the whole allocation worth somewhere in the region of over £12m.

Interested parties must first register and submit a deposit of $100,000 to take part in the auction. Bids opened on Monday and will close on 1 December.

The US Marshal service issued the following statement: “On January 27, 2014, the United States District Court for the District of New York entered a Stipulation and Order for Interlocutory Sale of Bitcoins. In this order, both the United States and Ross William Ulbricht agreed that “the United States, in its sole discretion, may sell any portion or all of these Bitcoins, on a date or dates and in a manner to be determined by the government.”

The agency auctioned £11m worth of Bitcoins seized by the FBI during the Silk Road’s closure in a previous bundle, in June.

Silk Road Bitcoin

More from Silk Road

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +