General Services Administration Auctions $300K Worth Of Bitcoin

The General Services Administration is hosting an online auction of 4.92 bitcoin worth nearly $290,000 as we are looking some more into the latest Bitcoin news today.

The General Services Administration is auctioning around $300,000 worth of BTC last week and it is hosting the online auction as of late. The auction is split into five lots with the bidding set to close at 5 PM CT on October 28, the smallest lot available is 0.44 BTC which is worth less than $26,000 while the biggest lot of 1.5 BTC is worth around $88,400 at current prices. The highest bids are at a slight discount to the price of BTC with the bid totaling $283,630. this is not the first time a US government auctioned off BTC with the GSA arranging auctions of BTC back in March and April.

On the former occasion, one single lot of 0.74 BTC was purchased for $53,104 at a 21% premium on the current price of BTC, and the 11 lots amounting to 9.45 BTC were sold for $487,000 at a major discount. At the current price of BTC, they would have fetched $520,000 on the open market. The US government conducted a few big-ticket sales in the past and it sold more than 4000 BTC in February worth $37 million at that time and was forfeited in federal criminal, civil and administrative cases.

Probably the most memorable auction was in 2014 when 30,000 BTC worth $19 million seized from the dark web marketplace Silk Road were sold by the US Marshals with the venture capitalist Tim Draper harvesting up the BTC for an undisclosed price. Draper’s haul will be worth over $1.7 billion. Over the years the US lost billions of dollars by auctioning off BTC hat increased in value over time.

As recently reported, BTC Influencer Pierre Rochard called on the lawmakers to prevent more than $1.6 billion worth of seized BTC from being auctioned proposing that the confiscated coins should be put into a strategic BTC reserve. Rochard, the BTC maximalist behind the recent controversy on the ETH total supply, wants the legislators to draft and pass a bill that contains amendments to the Judiciary Act of 1789 which would aloe the US marshals Service to hold onto the BTC received. In a blog post that was published a few days ago, Rochard warned against the auctioning of the seized BTC by the IRS from an alleged Silk Road hacker noting that the US Attorney Office already filed a civil complaint about forfeiture of the BTC.