Barry Silbert, CEO of bitcoin investment platforms SecondMarket and Bitcoin Investment Trust, has released new data regarding the auction syndicate that his entities formed to participate in Friday’s US Marshals Auction of 30,000 BTC seized from online black market Silk Road.
The figures, while potentially unrelated to the final results to be confirmed Monday, provide evidence that Silbert’s strategy to use a syndicate model was successful at opening the auction to a wider range of foreign and domestic investors.
Results of our US Marshals bitcoin syndicate: Bidders – 42 Bids received – 186 BTC quantity bid – 48,013 Winners notifed by USMS on Mon
— Barry Silbert (@barrysilbert) June 28, 2014
The SecondMarket syndicate was one of a handful of confirmed bidders to be participating in the auction, with others including Pantera Capital, Binary Financial and Bitcoin Shop. Those confirmations were preceded by a lengthier list of names accidentally leaked by the US Marshals Service (USMS) that gave insight into other potential participants.
Silbert first announced his syndicate’s auction plan on 20th June, issuing a statement to interested investors that said the syndicate would lower the minimum bid needed to participate from $200,000 –the amount required by the USMS to join the auction – to smaller bids between $25,000 and $50,000.
In total, Silbert reported that 42 bidders took advantage of SecondMarket and BIT’s syndicate, and that the initiative garnered 186 individual bids on the assets.
Silbert also noted that the total value of the bids was 48,013 BTC or roughly $28.4m. At press time, the market value of the 30,000 BTC was roughly $17.7m.
For more on the strategies of other auction participants, read our full report.
Auction bidder image via Shutterstock