US Marshals To Auction 4,000 Bitcoins Worth $37 Million: How To Join?

KEY POINTS

USMS auctions 4,000 Bitcoins confiscated from "federal criminal, civil and administrative cases"
Interested bidders would have to put down $200,000 as the initial deposit to participate
The auctioned BTC will be divided into four blocks

About 4,000 confiscated Bitcoins will be held for auction by U.S. law enforcement officials.

On Monday, a total of 4,040.54069820 Bitcoins will be auctioned out by the United States Marshals Service (USMS) on Feb. 18, according to its official website. At the current price of $9,275 per BTC, that's equal to approximately $37 million.

The Bitcoins were forfeited by U.S. law enforcement from Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) cases, Homeland Security Invegestion and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) cases, and other "federal criminal, civil and administrative cases."

The auction that will be held online divides the confiscated Bitcoins into four blocks: Series A, Series B, Series C, and Series D.

Series A will contain 500 BTCs, and bidders will have to fight for only five of those blocks; Series B contains 100 BTC, and ten blocks are available; Series C has 50 Bitcoins per block with only ten available; and finally, Series D contains 40.54069820 each.

USMS Bitcoin Auction Series United States Marshals Service

To participate in the auction, interested bidders would have to register and put down a $200,000 deposit on or before Feb. 12. Winning bidders also have to ensure that they have enough money to cover their bid minus their initial deposit. Losing bidders, on the other hand, will be refunded.

Auctioning government-seized Bitcoins was a practice that goes back as early as 2014 when billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper notably won all the 29,656.51306529 BTC captured from Silk Road, and at that time Bitcoin was only trading under $600, which would equate to about $18 million.

In 2018, a similar auction was conducted by USMS, but the number of Bitcoins confiscated was under 1,000 at just 660.

This year's Bitcoin auction has already opened registration on Monday, and the deadline is by noontime EST on Wednesday (Feb. 12).

Interested participants would have to submit the following required documents to USMSCryptocurrency@usdoj.gov:

A manually signed pdf copy of the Bidder Registration Form
A copy of a Government-issued photo I.D. for the Bidder (or Control Person(s) of Bidder)
Deposit in U.S. Dollars sent by Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) originating from a bank located within the United States
A copy of the EFT transmittal receipt

More details can be found on the USMS website.