US Marshals Accidentally Reveal Potential Bidders For Gov't-Seized Bitcoin 101
jfruh (300774) writes "When the U.S. government shut down the Silk Road marketplace, they seized its assets, including roughly $18 million in bitcoin, and despite the government's ambivalence about the cryptocurrency, they plan to auction the bitcoin off to the highest bidder, as they do with most criminal assets. Ironically, considering many bitcoin users' intense desire for privacy, the U.S. Marshall service accidentally revealed the complete list of potential bidders by sending a message to everyone on the list and putting their addresses in the CC field instead of the BCC field."
Re:This is what happens (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoils of war. (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who gets disturbed every time it's blithely mentioned that this or that police agency gets to take spoils for themselves? It seems a little... inherently corrupt.
Re:A planned failure (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think that the leak is a failure, well, it's a PLANNED FAILURE
The Fed doesn't like bitcoins, feels very threaten by bitcoins, and hope that nobody will deal in bitcoins
With the sale of those bitcoins of course they will execute a planned failure that will look to the world at large as a "leak"
It is never a leak, it is a PLANNED LEAK
I'm not so sure. I'm thinking that Hanlon's Razor [wikipedia.org] should be applied here.
Re:Auctioning money? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fine, but that doesn't change my basic point. Why bother with an auction that will necessarily get less than an open market?
The same reason you wholesale anything; You get a transaction that moves a large volume quickly. Basically all consumer goods you buy in any kind of branded store works this way, Wholesalers, whether manufacturers or a middleman, sell large volume to companies who then take the burden of distribution but reap the benefits of charging retail price and profiting on the difference between that and the wholesale cost plus infrastructure/logistics costs. The wholesaler gets the benefit of moving a large volume at an agreed upon price and not having to worry about inventory control, distribution, or logistics of getting it to the consumer.
This is not strange, or even strange at all. Side benefit in this case, they get the auction entry fee from everyone bidding regardless of whether they win and also a look into who is interested in amassing a large quantity of bitcoins.
Honestly this shouldn't require explanation,