The United States Marshals Service (USMS) announced an online auction of Approximately 4,040.54069820 bitcoins, through their official web page.
According to the press statement, the crypto coins were forfeited in different federal criminal, administrative and civil cases. A watertight vetting process has been put in place to get on the bidders. The USMS has set a minimum deposit fee at $200,000.00, for a bidder to be allowed to participate in the auction.
With the set date on the auction on February 18, both U.S citizens and non-citizens can participate in the auction under strict conditions. The bidders are only to use a US registered bank to wire the cash which should only be in US dollars.
According to the statement released on January 31, 2020, the sealed bid auction for the coins will happen in four series. Series A will have five blocks of 500 Bitcoins, series B will have ten blocks of 100 Bitcoins, series C will contain ten blocks of 50 Bitcoins, and series D will have one block of about 40.54 Bitcoins.
The bidding registration is set to begin as of Monday, February 3, 2020, and closed by Wednesday, February 12, 2020. After the auction is completed, the winners will be notified through their emails, where the bitcoins will be sent to their BTC address in one batch.
Bitcoin Auction in Action
As the old saying goes, one man’s loss is another man’s profit, the Bitcoin auction is proving to be a very lucrative fast income business to some. Checking down the history lane, after the feds have announced the auction of seized crypto assets, the winning bid has always taken home millions of dollars in profit.
On June 30, 2014, when 30,000 bitcoins were auctioned at an estimated value of about $19.4 million, the buyer identified as Timothy Draper made a whopping net profit of around $52.5 million. Later in the same year on December 9, 2014, exchange market SecondMarkets, bought 48,000 Bitcoins at around $18.1 million, reciprocating to a net profit of around $97 million.
On November 30, 2015, an unknown buyer pocketed 44,000 bitcoins at $14.6 million making a net profit of $90.9 million. Later on August 22, 2016, an unknown buyer made a net profit of around $4.9 million after he bought 2,700 Bitcoins at $1.6 million.
The auctioning of seized bitcoins has proven to be a quick and legit way to acquire crypto assets.
