US Government to auction $37 million of Bitcoin

A sweet, sweet deal for Bitcoin investors could be just around the corner. On February 18, the US government is auctioning off over 4,000 Bitcoin, worth approximately $37 million, that have been forfeited in federal criminal, civil, and administrative cases. 

Registration opened on Monday, and the deadline for registration is next Wednesday. The required deposit to take part in the auction is $200,000.

The auction will be split into four parts: Series A will auction off 5 blocks of 500 Bitcoin; Series B, 10 blocks of 100 Bitcoin; Series C, 10 blocks of 50 Bitcoin; and Series D, 1 block of 40.54 Bitcoin. 

More than $200,000 worth of the crypto came from a case against two drug dealers from Alabama. Tyler Lee Ward and Henry Long Nguyen were sent to prison in May 2019 for conspiring to sell Alprazolam, maintaining a “drug-involved premise,” and “conspiracy to commit money laundering,” according to a press statement by the Department of Justice. 

The US government’s auction follows others from around the world. In September 2019, British police auctioned off over £240,000 of cryptocurrency. The Bitcoin’s former owner, the teenager Elliott Gunton, was sent to prison for hacking the telecommunications provider TalkTalk. 

Some investors have found these auctions to be a profitable strategy. Tim Draper famously purchased 30,000 Bitcoin in an auction in 2014. He added to this stash with a further 2,000 Bitcoin later that year in another auction. 

Although Draper said, at the time, that he planned to invest them in Bitcoin startups, if he did hang onto them, they’d be worth a combined total of $300 million.