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US To Auction 29,656 Bitcoins Seized From Silk Road
ClownP writes with news that the U.S. Marshals Service is selling off 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins that were seized when the Silk Road website was shut down. At current exchange rates, they're worth around $17-18 million. The coins will be auctioned off in nine blocks of 3,000 coins, plus one block with the remainder.
The USMS said that the first deadline for bidders will be 9am Eastern Time on June 16, 2014. All bidders must complete the government's Bidder Registration Form, which requires that you provide a copy of a government-issued ID as well as a $200,000 deposit sent by wire transfer from an American bank. The government added that the highest bidder will win, and he or she cannot finance its payment in installments — the winner must pay the full amount in cash. The USMS added one final stipulation. "The USMS will not sell to any person who is acting on behalf of or in concert with the Silk Road and/or Ross William Ulbricht, and bidders will be required to so certify," the USMS stated.
On the first bitcoin, I bid one bitcoin.
They're laundering the coins. The high bidders will end up being shell companies for TLAs.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
IRS said bitcoin is property
It's an auction of property they seized. If the property value is expected to sell for more money than you have, you will not be the highest bidder. This is the way auctions (government and non government) have been for just about ever. This has nothing to do with the rich or poor. There is no incentive to split them into 29,000 individual items either. That would be a waste of time and money.
No, it doesn't, actually, or at least not any more than it somehow makes cars, homes, or other items seized and auctioned off suddenly become money.
What would legitimize it would be if they kept them and used them as money to buy things. They aren't. They're getting rid of them and explicitly NOT treating them like money.
It's literally no different than if they'd seized any other thing that some people think is worth buying.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Let me blow your mind right now: all currency is fake. That's what makes it currency instead of bartered goods.
Because that's not how the government works in this regard?
They take shit, they auction it off to the highest bidder. The government is not in the business of managing an inventory, they want to convert whatever they take into cash as fast and efficiently as possible.
They think 3000 coin lots is the most efficient way for them to sell them, and couldn't give a shit as to who buys them as long as they pass the vetting process.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Civil Asset Forfeiture doesn't require that you're found guilty. The government gets to take your stuff and sell it just to make sure you don't have money to defend yourself with.
I read the internet for the articles.
You're thinking of English auctions. There's also Dutch auctions where the price is lowered from the seller's reserve price and then sealed auctions in which everyone submits a single bid.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Well that's the seizure portion of it and the recent Supreme Court ruling, one of the worst in history, doesn't say anything about the sale of those assets. That decision is so horrible because a lot of prosecutor's budgets are funded by seized assets creating a conflict of interest and violating the 5th and 6th amendments. We've seriously gone to far on the war on drugs and the police state mentality in this country and it has to stop. If this guy is convicted then the assets obtained illegally should be forfeit, agreed but wait until the fucking trial is at least concluded and guilt or innocence is determined. Defendants also must have the right, as written in the 6th amendment to choose their own counsel and that requires funds to provide an adequate defense. If the assets are seized, then you have no right to chose your counsel creating a no win situation. That's a secondary consideration but as a citizen I'm very concerned that something like this could happen to me or my family and while I'm fighting in court the government is just selling everything off that we've worked our entire lives to acquire and protect. Right now the government has built a case but it's only been seen by a grand jury in the Ulricht case, that doesn't mean a conviction and selling the assets is a violation of his 5th amendment rights.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Well, the owner of Silk Road would first have to actually claim the coins. Right now, no one is taking ownership of said coins so they are considered abandoned. The government is not a storage locker. You get a set amount of time to claim your property or its abandoned. It's the same as if your car was towed and you didn't come get it. Or if someone steals some of your stuff and is later caught by police. The police will hold the items until someone claims them or they are considered legally abandoned then auction them off.
As far as this move showing the feds find Ulbricht guilty without trial, he says he didn't run Silk Road so why would auctioning off SR assets matter to him? Ulbricht objecting to the sale would be as legitimate as me objecting to the sale. I don't have any rights to the coins, and he disavows any rights to them.
You're very confused.
Being able to pay for something with legal tender (US dollars) does not somehow make the things you buy with legal tender into legal tender itself. Nor does it somehow turn it into a currency. It sets no precedent.
Selling bitcoin - or ANYTHING ELSE - at an auction in exchange for US dollars does not set ANY kind of precedent establishing that bitcoin - or ANYTHING ELSE - is now legal tender. In fact, it establishes the opposite.
What WOULD set a precedent is if the government called up some suppliers and gave them bitcoin directly in exchange for things that aren't legal tender, because then they would be saying that bitcoin is the same as US dollars.
What they are doing here is saying "we have these bitcoins (and other things) and we would rather have US dollars, which are legal tender. We will give you these bitcoins for dollars, which we will then go and use like real money."
This isn't difficult.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Let me blow your mind right now: all currency is fake. That's what makes it currency instead of bartered goods.
This. Times a million
Every currency (Yes, Virginia, even gold-standard currencies) are completely fake and arbitrary. The difference between fake and arbitrary fiat currency and fake and arbitrary gold-standard currency is exactly one layer of abstraction, because the "value" of gold is in itself pretty arbitrary. It is somewhat rare, but it's "value" is completely generated by the human mind. Which is actually for the best--can you imagine how high the price of gold would be if it was actually useful for something besides making jewelry and helping Fox News scam old people out of their savings with terrible gold investment opportunities?
Humans assigned "value" to gold because it was rare-enough to avoid hyper-inflation, but common enough that you didn't have to worry about deflation. And that worked just fine for a few tens of thousands of years... until there were too many humans for the world supply of gold to adequately represent new wealth and value as they're created.
If a more numerous race of aliens had evolved on this planet they might have assigned value to blades of grass, pebbles, or certain kinds of trees in a similar matter based on their own needs.
Which is why the entire "gold standard" argument (that "our money is fake and worthless") is so stupid: Yes, it is fake and worthless. So is all other money, everywhere--the value comes from the perception. So it doesn't matter if its "backed by gold" or "backed by Jell-O Pudding pops" the fact is, the value is based totally on the perception of value of something. With fiat currency, it's the perception of the value of what you can buy, with "gold-standard" currency it's the perception of the value of the gold. But neither has any "real" value without that perception.
Who did what now?