This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Virtual Currency Slides As FBI Prepares To Dump 144,341 "Silk-Road" Bitcoins
The FBI announces it is preparing to sell the 144,341 Bitcoins that were collected during raids in the online drug market Silk Road. While the WSJ reports, the timing and sales method are unclear, it is already weighing on the virtual currency as the Bitcoin traders front run the Fed's unwind...
- *FBI SAYS TO TRANSFER BITCOINS TO U.S. MARSHALS
- *FBI TRANSFER INVOLVED 144,341 BITCOINS SEIZED FROM SILK ROAD
- *US MARSHALS TO AUCTION BITCOINS FROM SILK ROAD CASE
- *US MARSHALS: AUCTION TO TAKE PLACE JUNE 27 6AM-6PM ET
- *U.S. MARSHALS SERVICE SEEKS BIDS FOR 29,656 BITCOINS
»
- 24301 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
I'm buying more @$500...my mining operation is about to double!!
BTFD
NOT!
You HOLD and PRESERVE weath in gold as has been proven through the ages. Bitcoin is useful as a short-term tool to TRANSFER wealth outside the system if necessary. Two entirely different purposes and you need not hold any bitcoins at all until you need the transfer function. Bitcoin is far too unstable and speculative to be seen as a wealth preservation tool and barriers to entry are extremely low. Virtual currencies have their benefits, and these are significant, but anyone saying that virtual currencies preserve wealth are simply speculators trying to blow bubbles for their own benefit. I have no interest at all in bitcoin, but I hope it and other virtual currencies exist to be used if necessary.
Yours is the first intelligent comment on Bitcoin I've seen yet. You have it exactly right.
Thanks. There's way too much obvious pumping by the bitcoin crowd who go on and on about its future value, buying the dips etc etc. If that's your line then you miss the point entirely or are a pump and dump dirtbag no different than the wall street scum. But people talking about the transfer utility of virtual currencies have very solid points that gold advocates should appreciate. Difference between bitcoin thieves and free market advocates with respect to virtual currencies is clear with this distinction in mind. I'm personally interested in bitcoin as I could conceivably need it some day, but "investing" in it is highly speculative and has nothing to do with long-term wealth preservation. So it is possible to be pro-virtual currencies and not have a nickel invested. Of course that approach doesn't make for a good shouting match on ZH.
Nice what you have said apart from the bitcoin theives part. Any investment is speculative. If you do not wish to speculate then do not invest and vice-versa. You are speculating by just using cash , gold , a bank account or an insurance company. Bitcoin is exactly that.
Investing in any monetary object is always a gamble (actually investing is always a measured gamble). If Russia and China join the NWO crowd in promoting some kind of fiat currency like the IMF SDR and it takes root then gold could go to sleep for another 30 years until the new ponzi currency blows up. Neither gov't nor bankers want specie money and most people, including many ZH readers don't understand what "money" really is, so probably some kind of fiat will replace the dollar globally because there might not be sufficient groundswell pushback from common folk. Everybody will just have to take their own best guess for what will come to pass as "money". For "cash" I keep forty percent gold, forty percent silver and twenty percent btc. I don't consider money an investment but as a potential to act on an investment opportunity. If there is a capital gain from money kept then thats extra. Investments are real estate that produces a net income, no matter how small, while preserving its capital value against the inflation of ponzi currencies, ie buys the same number of loaves of bread in the future. Profitable businesses that you control yourself is also an investment. And other objects like art and collectables can at least hold value with some degree of reliability. For me long term wealth preservation comes from diversifying and sheltering assets (I agree with Simon Black on this). Besides how long do you plan to live anyway? In the end it all comes to naught anyway.
Too true.
That's why despite gold's incredible value, and silver's, I don't pump it too hard.
If you are an unbeliever then PLEASE buy none, sell anything of it you find.
Last thing I need is other people driving up my cost to acquire & driving down available supply.
" HODLING Gold Since 2011 tm "
You do what you like. I've got different plans.
Ya, so did those operating the Hindenberg.
Good luck.
Really getting sick of ZH posting non-log charts that make everything look like a crash.
it looks like a crash in log-scale too.
Like this? http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg360ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzl
Precisely - a log-scale chart showing even the smallest nudge down from the peak was a loss of 50% of price in US dollars (which means in other currencies almost the same). That's a MEGA-crash.
When it goes further down that scale and bitcoin is 50 US PENNIES each, it will be like a black hole sucking in your universe as you scream "It can't be possible!!" and you'll all be bankrupt. Bitcoin isn't real money. Its sole purpose is to get real goods from other people for NOTHING of value. Once there are no suckers ready to take that leap of faith to your benefit YOU are left with NOTHING but useless bits.
http://flic.kr/p/iFQMoV
One and Only... a couple of problems with your analysis.
First - And perhaps I'm just being picky, it is certainly not necessary to count to 2256 to brute force it. To say so assumes that the correct combination is the last possible one to test.
Second - And more importantly, the preferred method of attack for large keys is not raw brute force but to use cryptalaysis to shorten the list of keys that need to be tested. Several of these strategies exist for AES which already can bring the list down to 270 which is much more practical.
Of course, the easiest way to steal your bitcoins is the old fashioned way - put a gun to your head and tell you to give them to me.
What if I change my address? How often can I change my address? How many possible addresses are there. How does that change your cracking calculus?
Oh...I bet mine is bigger than yours.
Did I just hear Peter schiff just closing his bitcoin window... Yes, yes I heard him scream no shit coins for gold! and slammed the phone down
I think it would be hilarious if they were lying. They just said that to fuck with the price.
So government sees a value in bitcoin?
Too bad they don't auction off cocaine.
Pho Sho, coke may be the only tangible good that I will sell my precious bitcoins for........
Perhaps a stupid/naive question, but: how come they can be selling the bitcoins? Has the ALLEGED Silk Road founder actually been convicted of anything?
Obomba signed an Executive Order
Civil asset forfeiture, one of the most vile legal concoctions this country has ever invented. That's how.
the report is false. only the silk road coins are being sold. ulbricht's coins are protected.
The bitcoin folks that control the bitcoin market, they can ID the feds stolen bitcoins, and see what the feds spent them on (hookers drugs?) its in the chain of origin, or better yet crush the bitcoin market price to a penny until the feds unload, then re-inflate very much like the federal reserve jerks around the American people.
According to the ZH Flat Earth Society , bitcoin was finished in 2011 , 2012 , 2013 and now again in 2014 ?
You said it was finished with the end of Silk Road , then it was finished again with Mt. Gox , now it's finished again because of the FBI ?
You say if it is successful that is because it was created by the Fed and NSA , but if it fails it was because it's a Ponzi Scheme Tulip Bulb - you cannot have it both ways.
This technology is nothing short of absolute technical genius , do your homework
Until it can lay its own network fiber into the ground & build its own transmitters, it has no value to me over gold.
That pretty much means bitcoin was done back in 2010 for me & is done already today.
Now the only question is which people will be bag-tossers & which will be bag-holders.
The bitcoin bubble is dead.
PGP is absolute genius.
Bitcoin is rubbish.
It may just come true if you repeat that enough times. Honest.
If it appears that it is not coming true , please go back to the Doctor and explain that the medication is either not working or the dose is too low.
i agree with you, except, that, if we live in a society where we can't use the internet to the extent required for bitcoin, it's a really bad sign. nobody wants to live in that society, not even you, really.
you already do. that is why the privacy-sensitive market is switching over from bitcoin, tracked by the nsa, to monero, which is private and untracable.
I find it really good and I definitely absolutely want to live in that world.
That's a world where centralized power-grids don't exist & can't trap me, centralized surveillance can't exist & centralized networks don't exist.
That's the perfect world. I want it immediately.
Back up the truck as the FBI finishes its firesale. That's what most of the traders who sold on the FBI news would like to do (heck, what trader or even investor would not love to sidestep a distressed seller (or are they) and even better profit from the risk/opportunity.
no fire sale here. these coins are certified by the u.s. government to be legally unencumbered. they are worth far, far more than the market-clearing price.
Belgium will buy them all.
Perfect shakeout of weak hands. Funny, the original Silk Road closure was the event that triggered a bitcoin 10 bagger bubble last year. I'm betting we'll see BTC to Au parity again this year, probably as early as July.
Not likely. BTC is heading to $5 and gold is heading to $5000.
5 ounces of silver here says you're wrong. You up for it?
I offered a trader who said bitcoin was dead - 10 bitcoins in early 2013 so he could short sell them out. He refused. He bottled it. None of the Flat Earth Society idiots put their money where their mouth is. They are bullshitters and are weak on the long and on the short. They are just Noise to be ignored. If they really want some action they should have been shorting it for the last 5 years. Hot Air & Noise.
Bitcon is down a lot from the 1200 peak and it won't ever get up there again.
Ever.
Bitcon is garbage.
It requires a grid and real money requires the ability to work without any grids at all.
You still can't explain how I can use it where there is no grid, you only all act like deniers-in-chiefs saying "that will never happen!" and "you wouldn't want to live that way anyhow!"
But yes I do. And I will. You all will.
Betting real silver atoms for bitcoin volatility: never.
I will simply hoard silver & avoid bitcoin.
Bitcoin is poison compared to actual money. You can play with it all you want.
Bitcoin already as I proved hit $5.76 before and it will hit it again.
All the while we waited for the moment you doubted it as I said we'd smack down to 140 and you said "no, shall not be!" then it was.
And round-and-round we go again.
If you TRULY want to prove me wrong you should load up on bitcoins as much as possible before the price goes up.
I'll happily cheer you on while I KNOW what you'll feel when bitcoin his $5.00 USD each and keeps dropping.
I will gladly take the same bet as the previous poster!!! Lemme know
When the FBI seizes guns and says they were used for crimes, they crush them.
When the FBI seizes Bitcoins and says that they were used for crimes, they make a profit off of them.
I guess we should just be grateful they did not give them to criminals in Mehiko
I am sure Obama gave a few thousand bitcoins to the terrorists he released, you know just to make sure they have some cash.
So, you're saying the FBI incorrectly lumped Bitcoin in with other seized asset types such as real estate, stock certificates and gold. But you think they should have classified BItcoin as a weapon? I like where you are heading with this...
Gordon Brown & Associates has found a client, I see.
I'm impressed they cracked the wallet's encryption.
More like they cracked toes and fingers with hammers haha.
The guy was an idiot for keeping it all in one place..... I would of had atleast 10~20 wallets in different locations, he could of given them 5 ~ 10 wallets and still had a nice nest egg for when he gets off.
I expect BTC to take a pretty bad hit as those coins hit the market, but it will be temporary, great time to buy after, it shouldn't be that big of a drop, its not even as much as the amount of bitcoins that are mined each month, and I would imagine that they aren't all going to be sold to one person, its going to be a few dozen people who absorb them.
Looks like they are going to auction them off in 30,000~50,000 coin chunks.
Over 7000 BTC are mined a day give or take.
So figure over 200,000 BTC are mined a month, this is like dumping a months worth of BTC on the market, anyone who buys these BTC probably wont rush to dump them, because they would be stupid to , they wouldn't be able to offload even 10,000 BTC before people catch on and remove their bids for a lower price.
They might actually have a hard time finding buyers, they are honestly better off depositing the coins on an exchange and just putting up a huge sell wall at 90% market value so the coins can be absorbed no one is going to buy 140,000BTC one shot, only some criminal banker who likes to gamble.
BTC is pretty much the only true free market asset left on the planet and thus subject to strict rules of supply and demand, this is why bankers cant wrap their head around it.
your numbers are wrong, as are the numbers in the original article. ulbrichts coins are not being auctioned. only the coins seized from silk road are being auctioned, 26000 of them, in lots of 3000 (less than one day's supply inflation). the sell off is pure sheep herding. now the wolves come in and snatch coins from weak hands.
bitcoin! LOL
That is all.
Agreed , it will be.
Sounds like you don't understand what 'agree' means.
Bitcoin shall be forgotten within a few years and the last shimmer of memory of it will be 'a way a lot of computer illiterate people tricked themselves into thinking they were money and computer geniuses, and then lost all their money and were stuck with useless specialized computers that couldn't do anything else'
aka
'derp'
I'll buy *that* for a dollar!! Okay, maybe a dollar per.
Looks like gh0atrider is the new Fonestar?
HAHAHA, nothing at this point will stop the Satoshi army!!!!!! Go ballz deep into btc!!!! FUUUUKKK YAAA BITCOIN!!!!!
I almost bought some last week! That would've been a Gartman trade!