Oh no, are we going to repeat all the previous 4691 questions too?

Neo & Bee went down when their CEO ran away after they failed to get Central Bank authorization for their bank, and he realized that his castle of cards was about to collapse.  He allegedly took the remaining company's coins (and, according to police charges, money that he got from other people in exchange for bitcoins that he did not deliver), leaving behind debts and unpaid salaries.

Only then did investors bother to read the Neo & Bee prospectus and noticed that it did not contain a viable business plan.

Only then did investors bother to check Danny's background, and found that he had no background in finance at all, and he ad pulled a similar stunt in the UK before moving to Cyprus.  He had announced he was going to organize a big music festival in Lincolnshire, sold tickets, got advance license money from food vendors, etc; but then cancelled the event, and said that the debts were not made by his person but by his company, that he had sold, so he owed nothing.

AFAIK he is still hiding, somewhere in the world.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=529946.msg6500610#msg6500610

Some vague information about the bid prices:

http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=135754:SecondMarket-Pantera-outbid-in-Bitcoin-auction&catid=69

https://www.finalternatives.com/node/27493

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/after-bitcoin-auction-winning-bidders-remain-elusive/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1

There is a thread about the auction results:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=668635

Thanks! Charts say that on December 19, the Bitstamp price was 520$ open, 685$ close, 492$ low, 700$ high.  So the price is about back to where it was then.  (I saw some article on that prediction that stated 'currently it is 610$', so that date seems right.)

You are confusing me with Tuur Demeester perhaps? 

Right.  Also, if one of the winners fails to wire in the payment (and thus loses the 200 k$ deposit)  they have to notify the next highest unfilled bidder, and give him an extra day to send his payment, and so on.  It is only after they got payments for all lots of the same series that the winners and losers (and the winning prices) will be defined. 

Presumably professional bidders like SecondMarket make sure that they have the full amount on hand before submitting a bid.  But who knows what types may have bid on this auction.   

USMS notice of the auction:
http://www.usmarshals.gov/assets/2014/bitcoins/
FAQ of the same (check items 10 and 11):
http://www.usmarshals.gov/assets/2014/bitcoins/faqs.pdf

It is everywhere, so shouldn't it rather be Satan discarnate?

Please stop that nonsense.  Bitcoin is not a viable hedge against inflation, not even in Argentina.  Pushing it on Argentinians as such is a scam, pure and simple.  Have people forgotten Neo & Bee already? 

The syndicate got 186 small bids totalling 48,000 BTC.  As you say, it would be silly to submit all of them to the USMS, so SecondMarket must have picked the ones with largest bid price, totalling the 29'600 BTC, and assembled from them a set of bids for the 9+1 lots on auction. 

Is the 20 M$ figure real information?  From the comments following Alan Silbert's tweet, I understood that it was only his estimate, or at least he did not clearly admit that it was real.  Have there been any explicit leaks or claims by any bidders about the bid prices?

if the bids were well above 630$, shouldn't he reveal the values, to push the price up?

Where did you get that idea? Have you checked Danny's curriculum in the UK?

I have to pay some 70$/month for it, you call that free?

Sense it does make, but the question is, was that reply sincere and truthful, of was @BTCat just pulling my leg?

The list was already admitted to be false, but supposing it were real..

If those three lots supposedly bought by SecondMarket were the syndicate bids, no problem.

If SecondMarket placed bids of their own (as you assumed), there would be a problem.  They knew the syndicate bids, and those bids were more than enough to cover all the lots.  Therefore, bidding below them would be stupid, bidding above them would betray the trust that the syndicate participants deposited on them.  Ditto if they entered the syndicate with bids of their own.

Thus, we should conclude that SecondMarket did not bid, except as representatives of the syndicate.  Which means that their expected fee revenue from the syndicate members was greater than their expected profit from bidding at the auction.

As for them needing coins in the long run, that is not how their fund is supposed to work.  They should buy only when people buy shares of their fund.  Ostensibly they make money from fees, whatever happens to the BTC price.  They could get extra profit by buying coins in advance if they expected the price to rise, but that would put the fund in a risky negative-cash position.  On the other hand they will never find it hard to buy the coins they need at near market price, since OTC price will not be far from it. 

Is this list real?

Seems very unlikely that SecondMarket would enter a bid itself.  Can people see why that would be a big ethical problem?

Those numbers are only for the "sub-auction" (syndicate, bidding pool) that SecondMarket organized to let smaller fish bid at the USMS auction.  People who did not have enough money to bid for a whole 3'000 BTC lot could submit a bid to the SM syndicate (with minimum 25'000 USD, it has been claimed), who merged the highest bids and submited bids to the USMS.  No one knows how many bids and bidders there were at the USMS auction itself.

As others explained, the syndicate must have selected the highest among those 186 bids, adding up to 29'600 BTC; and submitted bids to the USMS for the 10 lots, with suitable prices based on the input bids.  I can't see what the above ratio would mean.

Beware, the dollar amounts may have been added by CoinDesk based on the current price. Barry's tweet gave only the num of bidders, num of bids, and the total BTC.

When exactly did that prof make his prediction?