The story of the US Marshals Service Bitcoin auction: Tim Draper's digital kingdom actually started here

Beijing Lian'an News: According to information on the US government website, on February 18, 2020, the US Marshals Service will auction 4,040.54069820 bitcoins.

In fact, this is not the first time that the U.S. Marshals Service has auctioned Bitcoin. For example, in 2018, they auctioned more than 3,813 Bitcoins at one time.

Typically, the U.S. Marshals Service will display cases involving Bitcoin.

Of course, there are also specific auction processes and requirements. For example, this auction is divided into four batches, and a deposit of US$200,000 is required for each batch.

When it comes to Bitcoin auctions by the U.S. Marshals Service, the most well-known one was in 2014. On the one hand, the case involved was very famous, that is, the stolen money involved in the legendary dark web Silk Road; on the other hand, the amount is huge today, as many as 29,656 BTC; finally, the buyer is very famous, that is the famous Tim Draper.

Tim Draper is the founding partner of DFJ Investment Fund and a well-known investor in Silicon Valley. DFJ has invested in many well-known companies, such as Baidu, Skype, and Hotmail. He is also well-known in the field of digital currency. Although he is not the earliest investor in Bitcoin, he has become one of the first "prophets" in the mainstream venture capital industry to make a big bet on digital currency, and his "start" in digital currency is this auction.

The 2014 auction was held on June 27, US time. The deposit was $200,000, the same as today. There were 45 bidders throughout the process, with a total of 63 bids. In the end, there was only one winner, Tim Draper. After that, he participated in other related digital currency transactions, completed his original accumulation in the field of digital currency, and became a very influential boss in the industry.

So how was the transaction completed on the chain at that time, what was Tim Draper's receiving address at that time? How were these bitcoins disposed of? Next, our ChainsMap on-chain traceability system will reveal this process for you.

First, through a transaction with TX: 7ecad9a3e67bebda52c0bdafb53863938b86e30e58eb179aec747903b50baa2d, a batch of bitcoins involved in the Silk Road case were transferred to the relevant auction address of the U.S. Marshals Service. Then came the bidding process. Tim Draper successfully bid and won a huge amount of bitcoins. The Marshals Service then transferred the corresponding bitcoins to his address to complete the entire transaction process.

Next, you may be interested in how Tim Draper will deal with this batch of bitcoins? After receiving this huge amount of bitcoins in July, he started to operate these bitcoins on October 15 of that year.

We can see that in the early days, most of the bitcoins were sorted among the addresses belonging to Tim Draper, and a small amount was transferred to exchanges. The next step is actually very simple, that is, professional matters are left to professionals. For such a large amount of bitcoins, the most important thing is of course safe storage.

We can see that he eventually transferred most of his bitcoins to a professional bitcoin custodian, Xapo. In 2014, there were not many such institutions. Xapo was only established in 2012 and was fortunate enough to become the custodian of this batch of bitcoins. It is worth mentioning that Tim Draper's investment was not smooth sailing. At that time, the price of this batch of bitcoins he bought was $600 per coin, but in 2015, the price of bitcoin plummeted and once fell to around $200. I wonder what Tim Draper felt at that time.

In any case, today Tim Draper is already a successful investor in the digital asset field and one of the most famous bitcoin bulls. The latest round of US Marshals Service auctions comes at a delicate time when bitcoin prices are not low and there is a halving market expectation. Who will be the winner of this round of auctions? And can the winner of the auction become the final investment winner? Let us wait and see.