New York exchange itBit has revealed it successful bit for and won five auction blocks during last week’s bitcoin auction conducted by the United States Marshals Service (USMS).
The U.S. government held its final auction of seized bitcoins from Darknet drug market Silk Road on Thursday, last week in an event that saw the sale of 44,341 BTC. With a total of 21 blocks, 20 auction blocks contained 2,000 BTC with one additional block of 2,341 BTC.
At the time of announcing the auction, a notice from the USMS read:
These bitcoins were held in wallet files that resided on certain computer hardware belonging to Ross William Ulbricht, that were seized on or about October 24, 2013.
One successful bidder is revealed to be New York-based bitcoin exchange itBit after it revealed the successful winnings of five blocks, or 10,000 BTC in the auction.
According to Reuters , Bobby Cho, director of trading at itBit confirmed the bid by the exchange was made “on behalf of a syndicate of the exchange’s and over-the-counter trading clients.”
itBit also participated in the third Bitcoin auction held in March this year, successfully bidding for 3,000 of the 50,000 bitcoins auctioned at the time. Following the winning bid, itBit applied for Bitcoin’s first ever banking license the following month in New York. A month later in May, the bitcoin exchange was granted its license from the New York State Department of Financial Services.
Genesis Trading subsidiary Digital Currency Group also partook as a registered bidder in the auction but was informed by the USMS that the company did not win any blocks from the auction sale.
Altogether, the final auction proved to be underwhelming with the lowest number of bidders compared to previous auctions. The Thursday auction drew a total of 11 registered bidders with 30 bids among them. The first auction held in June 2014 for 30,000 BTC had 45 registered bidders who placed 63 bids. The third auction in March this year saw 14 bidders placing a total of 34 bids.
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