Investor Tim Draper is at it again when it comes to getting his hands on bitcoin. If tens of thousands of those coins that he managed to acquire during the Silk Road bitcoin auction earlier this year wasn’t enough, he’s acquired even more.
This week, the United States Marshals Service held their second bitcoin auction (again, from the Silk Road seizures), and Draper managed to pick up an extra 2,000 bitcoins from the pot of 50,000 that were made available.
Speaking to the New York Times, Mr. Draper said that “I will have to buy some more Bitcoin on the open market to fulfill my commitment to the new batch of Boost companies.”
One of the companies Mr. Draper is supporting is Mirror (formerly known as Vaurum), which aims to be an institutional platform for trading bitcoins.
Draper, of course, wasn’t the only individual to participate in the auction. According to the Marshals Service, a total of eleven parties participated in this second auction, demonstrating far less interest than the first auction (in which a total of forty-five parties participated).
This isn’t the end of the road for these bitcoin auctions, and there will be more opportunities for investors/others to pick up the digital currency. About 93,000 bitcoins are still in possession of the Marshals Service, to be auctioned off at a later time.
The entire pool of bitcoins held by the Marshals were seized in late 2013 during an intense take-down of the Silk Road illicit marketplace. The alleged head of the marketplace, Ross Ulbricht, is currently awaiting trial. That trial is expected to begin next month.
Source: New York Times