The United States Marshals Services is set to auction off around 4,040 Bitcoins worth more than $37 million on February 18.
Announced on Monday, these Bitcoins were confiscated by multiple law enforcements, which were then transferred to the Marshal Services for safe-keeping and further action.
“The auction will take place during a six-hour period February 18. Bids will be accepted by email from pre-registered bidders only,” the press release stated.
Interested bidders need to register themselves with Marshal Services and also have to deposit $200,000 to participate in the auction. If the bids of the participants are not accepted, this deposit will be refunded at the end of the auction.
As detailed in the announcement, the auction process will be separated into four series with 2,500, 1,000, 500, and 40.54069820 Bitcoins, respectively.
“The one registration form allows you to bid on multiple blocks from Series A, Series B, Series C and Series D at the same per Bitcoin price, but does not allow you to submit multiple bids at varying per-bitcoin prices,” the authority stated.
“If you wish to have the ability to bid multiple prices on multiple blocks, you will need to submit additional registration forms and additional deposit funds.”
Crime-related cryptos
Over the years, various US law enforcement seized hundreds of millions of digital currencies. The Marshal Services is responsible for the custody of these assets, following auctions to liquidate them.
The agency held the first such auction in the summer of 2014 for the coins seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the infamous Silk Road investigation. Following that, multiple other auctions were held for thousands of Bitcoins, the last one was held in 2018.
Similar to the United States, European counterparts are also conducting similar actions. The law enforcement of the United Kingdom and Belgium partnered with auction house Wilsons Auctions for crypto auctions.
