Plastics vary a lot in strength.  It seems worth requesting a tougher type of plastic from the case maker.  For such a small object, the extra cost should be small too.

Indeed...

When I was a kid, the optimists here used to say "Brazil is the country of the future". 

 Now it is the pessimists who say that. 

Thanks for giving me what I want. 

No particular reason.  Don't traders often refer to traders (bitcoiners to bitcoiners, males to males, ...) in the third person too?

Yeah, if you assume corruption, all bets are off.  Perhaps someone is afraid that his 75'000 BTC bribe may lose value by the time the defendant is acquitted on some technicality, and thought it better to cash it now.

Not particularly relevant, but a few years ago the Campinas police seized 130 kg of cocaine, the largest loot ever in the city.  They didn't have a lare enough safe, so they put it in an empty room in the Coroner's Office.  Unlocked. Unguarded.  Need I say that by the next day it was gone? And that, to this day, the police has no clue as to what happened?

Sorry, confirmation would require proof of work, and there is a difficulty there ...   

IIRC, right after the auction he said that he intended to use those coins to "provide liquidity" for some fund or payment processor that was being set up.  In other words, sell them off-exchange to that entity.

Can't disagree with that...

Indeed it has little effect.  Seizing a large amount of money or drugs gives media exposure, and that is good for people's career; but it does not make much difference whether it was 10 million dollars or 30 million, 300 pounds of cocaine or 900 pounds.  The gold stars in the SR case rained mainly from the message "FBI sank the flagship of the Dark Web".

Consider that the prestige of a politician or general does not depend on how much money he wastes or brings to the economy. 

It all comes from the fact that those public servants are managing other people's property (for seized assets are property of the people of the US), and the owners of that property don't know what is going on, and have very little control over it.

I think it is a bit different.  The 30'000 BTC June lot was seized property, and the the government is suposed to auction seized property as soon as possible, irrespective of market conditions.  It took so long only because they had to wait for permission by the court, and "soon" in government means "only a few months". 

This 150'000 lot is still disputed property, and Ross has not been convicted yet, so the government must consider what happens if he is cleared and the bitcoins are determined to be his property (as unlikely as they may think).  In that case, Ross could sue the government for the loss he suffered by not being able to sell them.  That would be bad for the career and prestige of the people responsible.  Thus the agreement.

Auctioning "perishable" goods in these circumstances probably has many precedents.  In any case, after the coins are converted to legal tender, with Ross's agreement, the people responsible cannot be blamed if the price goes up again.  They were as considerate as possible given the circumstances.

Civil servants do not get a cut of the money from the auction; that money goes to the Treasury (or to some general fund for the public good).  They are motivated by gold stars in their resumé, that eventually lead to promotions.  Catching and convicting criminals yields gold stars for all involved.  Carrying out a smooth auction of a weird item, with no complaints of bad press,  also yields gold stars.  They do not care if the auction messes the market or gets a lousy price, but they worry about doing something stupid that could stain their resumés -- such as auctioning a bunch of seized game tickets after the game, or auctioning so much stuff at one time that they cannot get enough bidders for it.

I doubt that he will escape a prison term; after all the publicity, it would send the wrong signal to the drug traffic industry.  Besides he will not have any money if he loses the trial.  And the charges include attempt to hire the murder of one or more people...

I don't think that Ross has any more control on the matter; the agreement, as I understood, covers the whole 140+ kBTC.  The USMS implied that they will auction them all, but they decided to split into three(?) auctions so as not to saturate the market.

The first lot was found on the SilkRoad server, so it could be auctioned right away.  Ross claims that the coins in his laptop are his personal property that he got from other legal activities; so that lot has to wait a court decision.   (Even if those coins did not come from SilkRoad, if he is found guilty of operating it he may have to turn them in as fines.)

You are joking, right?

Actually they did talk with Ross (not clear on whose initiative) and both agreeed to sell.  The FBI still cannot sell those coins on their own, it is not yet decided whether they belong to Ross or to SilkRoad.  If they belong to Ross, they would have to wait for the verdict on Ross's trial.

Whoa, no need to get upset....  I don't  knwo what you though I was implying...


The raid found ~30'000 BTC in the server and ~150'000 BTC in Ross's laptop.  Those were presumably the proceeds of fees from hosting businessess on SilkRoad.  Those 180'000 BTC  were kept away from the market; and part of them, at least, must have been bought by SR customers on the open market.  So Ross was obviously accumulating.  I would even guess that he had been holding almost all the bitcoins that he got.


Well, one of those 101 is to transfer them to a new owner; another is to deposit them on an exchange...


Most people who enter a commodity auction do not want to get the item at any cost, they want to make a good deal; which almost always means buying it below market price.

For the reason already stated, I strongly suspect that all the bets in the previous auction, including Draper's, were below the market price at the time (600$/BTC).  I expect that the same will happen in this auction.


Billionaires do not become so by not minding the loss of 6 millions.

Any one who owns a few thousand BTC will say that it will surely go to the moon one day.

I have seen many claims that big miners sell directly to big buyers off-exchanges, I don't know whether that is true.

SilkRoad apparently was accumulating bitcoins; if so, they were reducing liquidity and velocity, and increasing scarcity.  In that case, the FBI seizure, by itself, did not affect the market -- it was a direct transfer from one hoarder to another.

Tim Draper is holding (so he says; although his coins moved recently, it seems).  Given his experience (~33% paper loss so far), the next auction winner may be a speculator who buys substantially below market to sell right away, possibly on the markets. 

Yeah, from the outside it does not look that bad, does it?

It has been noted before that they seemed to buy at 1 week intervals (or do their accounting once a week).  But it was on Thursdays, IIRC...

I am still wondering about that puzzling SEC order. 

It may be safer to leave out the "Good Guys" list; they may turn out to be Bad Guys eventually.  (Whereas a once Bad Guy is better assumed to stay Bad Guy for a looong time -- see BFL, Danny Brewster, Mark Karpelès...)

Have you seen this video?  That favor to good friend and neighbor Karpelès may have convinced many people to keep their coins in MtGOX...

"Lyke de Vries" should be removed while the identity od SlOK is not confirmed.  Just list him as "SLoK" for now?