The US Marshals have announced an open auction of around 30,000 Silk Road bitcoins they hold, at time of writing around $18 million.
One of the biggest fears of Bitcoiners is that the mountains of coins held by the US and Japanese governments, from their investigations of Silk Road and Mt.Gox respectively, will be dumped onto the open market. The market for bitcoin is notoriously shallow, with very low volumes, so it would just take 28,500 bitcoin to crash the price to $1.50.
To get a shot at a lot of 3k, with one orphan lot of ~2.6k bitcoins, you’ll need to get $200,000, a government ID, and fill out a form by June 23rd. If the USMS like you, you’ll get access to their online auction on the 27th of June from 6 am to 6 pm, to try and win a block. It’s unlikely any one person will get all 10 blocks, but if they begin liquidating them… Let’s just say I’ll be watching the Winkdex starting June 30th, when the USMS send the winners their bitcoins.
