Some pretty big news coming from the SecondMarket/Bitcoin Investment Trust today. Company head honcho Barry Silbert took to Twitter on Saturday to announce that he’s planning to form a syndicate to bid on a huge sum of bitcoins up for auction by the U.S. Marshals service.
1/Announcement: @BitcoinTrust and SecondMarket’s bitcoin trading desk will be forming a syndicate to bid in US Marshals bitcoin auction…
— Barry Silbert (@barrysilbert) June 14, 2014
The announcement comes following this week’s headlines that the United States Marshals service is planning to auction off over 29,000 bitcoins worth over $16 million at today’s exchange rate. The bitcoins, of course, belonged to the Silk Road operation that was shut down by authorities last year.
SecondMarket and the Bitcoin Investment Trust have already set up a dedicated page for the matter:
SecondMarket and the Bitcoin Investment Trust expect to participate in the auction and will allow others to submit bids for aggregation in the process.
Silbert’s Bitcoin Investment Trust allows investors to put in large sums of money as means of getting involved in the bitcoin market, so it’s no surprise they’re getting involved with the auction as a means of getting their hands on an additional bitcoin supply.
In order to get involved with the Marshals service’s auction, bidders are required to register and submit a deposit of $200,000. The Marshals service will be auctioning the Silk Road bitcoins in segments.
A Series A auction will make 9 blocks of 3,000 bitcoins available, and a Series B auction will make 2,646 bitcoins available.
