U.S. Marshals Service Successfully Sells 3,600 Bitcoins at Auction

The U.S. Marshals Service has confirmed that over 3,600 bitcoin that were sold at an auction in January have been successfully moved to five winning bidders.

An unknown winner got 1,600 bitcoin (worth about $13.4 million as of press time), the agency verified in a report that was published just today, with the remaining buyers receiving 500, 500, 200 and 813 bitcoins (worth $4 million, $4 million, $1.6 million and $6.7 million), respectively.

With the exception of Riot Blockchain, which obtained one of the two 500-bitcoin lots, the names of the winners were not made public. Riot voluntarily revealed it had received 500 bitcoins shortly after the sale.

Of note, the agency ended up selling 100 bitcoins less than what it expected, a development it claimed was because of unforeseen technical issues. The agency is now taking care of those assets.

Stepping back, the sale signifies the very first time since 2016 that the agency has auctioned off bitcoins. During that time, the agency sold 2,700 bitcoins for a profit of less than $2 million.

The agency first announced its most recent sale on January 11 saying at the time that it was auctioning a little more than 3,800 bitcoins, which was worth about $54 million.

The day after the sale, the agency established it had gotten 111 bids from 62 unique registered bidders.

To register, each bidder had to place $200,000 and complete a registration process.

When the bitcoins were sold on January 22, they would have been worth an estimated $42 million.