Four bidders won $14 million worth of bitcoin in last U.S. auction
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Marshals Service said on Thursday four winning bidders emerged from last week's auction of bitcoins seized during the prosecution of the creator of the online black marketplace Silk Road. The Marshals Service did not identify the winners in what marked the final auction stemming from the case of Ross Ulbricht, who authorities say ran Silk Road, where the digital currency could be used to buy illegal drugs and other goods. The breakdown by amount of bitcoins won per bidder was 4,000, 6,000, 10,000 and about 24,341, said Lynzey Donahue, a Marshals Service spokeswoman. Those bitcoins were worth $14.3 million, according to the Bitstamp exchange. On Monday, New York-based bitcoin exchange itBit said it won five blocks of the digital currency equivalent to about 10,000 bitcoins at last week's auction, conducted by the U.S. Marshals Service. The bid by itBit was organized on behalf of a syndicate of the exchange's and over-the-counter trading clients, said Bobby Cho, director of trading at itBit, in an email to Reuters. (Reporting by Nate Raymond and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss in New York; Editing by W Simon and Bill Rigby)
