Report: Update from U.S. Marshals Service about Silk Road auction bidders

Representatives from the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed new details about the auction to CoinDesk, adding fuel to the fire of speculation about the results. The agency said that a total of 45 registered bidders participated in the auction, and that 63 bids were placed on the nearly 30,000 BTC seized from the Silk Road black market site last October. With each bidder required to deposit $200,000 to participate, bidders ponied up a total of $9 million just to take part.

CoinDesk reports that the Marshals Service has not yet tallied the winning bids, and declined to clarify what information from the auction would be released.

At the same time, CoinDesk was able to confirm the identities of some of the bidders:

The number of confirmed bidders in the auction, however, continued to grow today, with The Wall Street Journal indicating that Boston-based bitcoin financial services company Circle had participated. … With the news, Circle joins other notable names in the bitcoin industry as confirmed bidders including Barry Silbert’s investment vehicles SecondMarket and Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT), BitFury investor Binary Financial, bitcoin-based hedge fund Pantera Capital and online retailer Bitcoin Shop.

Although several interested parties in the auction were already known thanks to an accidental email list leak two weeks ago, the revelation that nearly four dozen bidders participated in the final auction itself is extremely telling. Even a comprehensive list of well-known bitcoin industry players, boosters and investors capable of making the security deposit and a reasonable bid for a block of 3,000 BTC would likely top out at 20 or 30, meaning there are almost certainly several unknown parties edging their way into the bitcoin ecosystem.