Are U.S. Marshalls Beyond Insider Trading?

[Bungeebones]

I find it odd that the Bitcoin being auctioned off today is totally secret. They could be going to Obama for all we know. How does the US Marshall service and law enforcement get away with a secret auction?

[muh_roads]

It wasn't secret, you just had to know where to look.

To take part in the auction you needed a minimum of $25K to participate.

[Bungeebones]

It wasn't secret, you just had to know where to look.

To take part in the auction you needed a minimum of $25K to participate.

No you missed my point (or I'm missing how the auction is being run). They aren't reporting WHO is making a bid, or how much they are bidding either during the auction or afterward. Like I said, Obama could be getting them for a penny a piece because even the winning bids are being kept a secret.

Or am I missing something? What person/persons are receiving the bids and opening them. How/when will they be reported and can they ever be verified who got them? As far as I know, the answer is no, we can't verify who got them. Obama? The Marshall? The Marshall's wife's brother? Who knows.

[muh_roads]

No you missed my point (or I'm missing how the auction is being run). They aren't reporting WHO is making a bid, or how much they are bidding either during the auction or afterward. Like I said, Obama could be getting them for a penny a piece because even the winning bids are being kept a secret.

Or am I missing something? What person/persons are receiving the bids and opening them. How/when will they be reported and can they ever be verified who got them? As far as I know, the answer is no, we can't verify who got them. Obama? The Marshall? The Marshall's wife's brother? Who knows.

I believe names participating in a Government seized auction are afforded the luxury of being anonymous for their own safety.

At any rate, here is an example of the Government $#@!ing things up again and accidentally releasing a partial list...

http://www.coindesk.com/list-possibl...d-us-marshals/

The list of names includes:

• Daniel Folkinshteyn, assistant professor at Rowan University
• Barry Silbert, CEO for SecondMarket
• Luther Lowe, director of public policy for Yelp
• Malcolm Oluwasanmi, chairperson of Little Phoenix Investment Group
• Fabrice Evangelista, quantitative arbitrage at BNP Paribas
• Michal Handerhanm, co-founder and COO of Bitcoin Shop
• Dave Goel, managing general partner of Matrix Capital Management
• Dinuka Samarasinghe, investment professional
• Chris DeMuth Jr., Rangeley Capital
• Fred Ehrsam, co-founder, Coinbase
• Jonathan Disner, corporate counsel at DRW Trading Group
• William Brindise, head investment manager at DigitalBTC
• Michael Moro, director at SecondMarket
• Jennifer R. Jacoby, lawyer at WilmerHale
• Sam Lee, co-founder, Bitcoins Reserve
• Shem Booth-Spain, artist and musician
• Avarus Corporation

[Bungeebones]

No, you still miss my point. There will be no way in EVER knowing who got those coins if I am understanding it. It would be so simple for the Marshall service to SAY they held an auction and have their buddies pocket the Bitcoin. I guess they'll have to hand some money over to whomever they have to but who is to say that they report all the bids? If Obama bids $400 and the general public bids $1000 the higher bid disappears and Obama gets it. And they keep Obama's name secret! That's the way this is going down? There is nothing I see that would prevent such a thing from occurring. And that is NOT the way governement auctions are held. That is our money (the taxpayers) and they need to be accountable.

Really weird auction rules? Something's not right!

[kpitcher]

I thought it was 200K deposited in a special bank just to be allowed the chance to bid.

Stupid of them to do it in large lots that would have went for less than market. Sell them on ebay, put them on the open market on one of the US bitcoin exchanges, lots of ways that would have been better.

However that's not the government way. I worked in the dotcom era with a B2B auction and approached my state with it for some state auctions. The State CTO liked the idea and gave final decision on the process to the state employee who was running the current auction process. This guy was looking forward to hiring more staff to expand his operation. We came in with a way to make more money without increasing any staff, if it worked well we could eventually decrease staff. But it would mean not working with the auction house he'd worked with for years. Guess what... he decided not to go with it. Now that's government efficiency.