Either way... It seems that the company (founded in 2010) had problems with banks some months ago.  Given how gold is doing, perhaps they don't expect to be around in 2016...

An old man keeps bragging in taverns that he can teach a donkey to speak.  The King hears about it, summons the man to the court and asks whether he said so.

-- Yes, Your Highness, I can teach a donkey to speak.
-- Well, then, you are hereby ordered to take a donkey from the royal stables and teach it to speak.  If you succeed, you will get a title and riches; if you fail, you will lose your head.  Understood?
-- Perfectly, Your Highness.  However the process is complicated, requires a special environment, expensive materials, and takes about five years.
-- No problem, you will have a spacious house, and all the money you need.  But, five years from now, you'd better bring me a talking donkey, or...
-- Thanks Your Highness, will do as you command.

When the man gets home and tells his wife what happened, she gets desperate.

-- Dear, what have you done! We both know that you cannot do it, it was idle talk, you will die!
-- Calm down, woman: before the five years are over, either the King is dead, or I am dead, or the donkey is dead...

  I would be surprised if it does.  Can you remove the key cap?  The working part of the key should be a bubble of silicone rubber with a  small conducting disk inside.  The key cap just squeezes that bubble until the disk makes contact with wires of the printed circuit below it.  Perhaps you can still squeeze the bubble directly, without the keycap.

Well, this precious metals trader (Amagi Metals) vowed to abandon the dollar for crypto in 2016:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2eqsl4/i_am_stephen_macaskill_ceo_of_amagi_metals/

[cynicism]Reminds me of the fable about the man who would teach a donkey to speak...[/cynicism]

A totally irrelevant thought: I am reminded of Danny Brewster's previous very short career in the UK as music festival organizer.  Presumably The Barn actually did organize the event, though...

To me, the only thing that is suspicious is their dragging their feet about the FOIA request, and the enhanced emphasis, in this announcement, that they are not going to release any information to the public.  One would think that the People of the US have the right to know how much their property was sold for.

Other than that, the terms of the auction seem pretty standard and logical, in the bureaucrat's way of thinking.

Recall that the price shoot up by ~150$ before the previous announcement, dropped some 75$ the day after the announcement, but recovered fully the day after the auction, when they revealed that all the lots had been bought by one bidder.  I find it hard to square those numbers with the claim that the USMS is trying to keep the price down.

Wired, 2014-11-24:
Brock Pierce from The Bitcoin Foundation is bullish about the future of... something?
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-11/24/bitcoin-myspace-cryptocurrency-blockchain

Wal Street Daily 2014-11-24
The Five Dumbest CEO apologies of the year
How Investors Respond to CEO Apologies
http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2014/11/24/ceo-apologies/

Guess who is #1...

So it is true, the price was being held down by the post-deleting threadwhales...

Trying to get into page 10000 while it is still time.

I have an exam to grade.  Does that explain it?

Well, he left open the question of whether the judge would be there.  So we did not know before, but now we know, that he may or may not know whether the judge will be there or not.  That is information, man.

You mean, leveraged posting?

That was a voluntary shutdown by the top managers, not a court-directed bankruptcy liquidation, right?

You mean, they are going to auction all the pages seized from the SilkRoad forum?  Should we form a syndicate for that?

I had some nightmares like this...

Page, sit!

What about now?

Now?

Now?