Thanks to the kind donations of Bitcoin from a wide variety of our visitors we’ve been hard at work making improvements to hangletonweblogs.
We were proud to have been a major source of news during the USMS Bitcoin auction seeing thousands upon thousands of visitors during the auction, after the auction and while waiting for an announcement from the winner. Just as things were reaching a peak for us we then were further seeing more traffic after Gigaom linked to our on-going live coverage.
Sadly, during that time period our WordPress installation and server were just unable to keep up with the demand of so many visitors so we’ve started investing in upgrading our infrastructure. We understand how frustrating it can be to visit our site and be presented with 500 errors or just a general slow loading time and believe me when I state that it has become increasingly frustrating for our staff as well.
Those sort of errors prevent us from getting the latest news online for you our readers and we’ve been hard at work on cranking out quality content but we haven’t always spent as much time focusing on how we deliver that content as we should be.
We’ve started though reducing the total time to our page load and have already seen an improvement of over 90% in the last three days. We aren’t quite satisfied with that yet though and are currently in the process of building a new machine to host our content on.
We appreciate our readers for sticking it out with us as we keep growing. We’ve been online for just under a month and have seen a great deal of changes during this time and expansion.
To those who have invested in this site by a small donation (even just a few satoshi help) we truly thank you. We are using these donations to make constant improvements and expansions to our site so the community has another quality choice for Bitcoin news, reviews and editorials.
We will keep working to bring you great content. Thank you for reading, commenting and submitting!
Organizers of the Cryptolina Bitcoin Expo announced today that world renowned venture capitalist Adam Draper will be addressing attendees and providing advice to local startups and aspiring entrepreneurs at the event. This is the second major announcement that hangletonweblogs has reported regarding Cryptolina after reporting on June 28th that the 38th Director of the US Mint would also be delivering the keynote at the event.
Draper is a fourth generation venture investor who mentors startups, and has invested in leading companies such as Coinbase, Practice Fusion and is the founder of Boost VC. Draper is the son of venture capitalist Tim Draper who was the winner of the USMS Auction.
“I’m excited to visit Raleigh and be a part of the Cryptolina Bitcoin Expo,” said Draper. “This effort to push forward the future of Bitcoin, crowdfunding and startups will be very successful in such a flourishing market.”
Draper is widely known in Silicon Valley circles and is bullish on the exploding venture capital market in Bitcoin. In March 2014, Draper stated that Boost VC planned to accelerate 100 bitcoin companies in the next three years.
“We are very happy to have Adam Draper coming in from Silicon Valley to share his time and expertise with the North Carolina Bitcoin and Startup communities. His guidance will be very valuable to all who attend the Cryptolina conference.” said Mark Easley, a Triangle based angel investor, crowdfunding
advocate, and former executive in the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.
By 2017 Boost VC plans to accelerate 100 Bitcoin companies out of the 250 total expected companies. Boost VC is an accelerator based in San Mateo, California that provides housing, office space, business and product guidance through a twelve week program balancing the guidance of seasoned mentors with
the drive of young, entrepreneurs.
Raleigh is playing host to the Carolinas first Bitcoin Expo on August 15th and 16th, 2014. The weekend event is being billed as ‘Cryptolina’, and will be held at the Raleigh Convention Center. For additional information on scheduling, ticket pricing, student pricing, sponsorships and demo opportunities please visit: http://www.cryptolina.com/
Tim Draper has won the US Marshals bitcoin auction and is partnering with Vaurum.
“Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy with weak currencies. With the help of Vaurum and this newly purchased bitcoin, we expect to be able to create new services that can provide liquidity and confidence to markets that have been hamstrung by weak currencies.
Of course, no one is totally secure in holding their own country’s currency. We want to enable people to hold and trade bitcoin to secure themselves against weakening currencies.” Draper said in a statement.
Vaurum has launched trading platforms in emerging markets, and we will be partnering with Tim to leverage the pool of ~30,000+ bitcoins as a liquidity source. It’s still quite difficult to get access to bitcoin in these developing economies.
Vaurum was incubated by Boost last summer. The company offers services such as a high-frequency trading engine that allows for Over-The-Counter bitcoin trading for financial institutions, a cold storage system, and more.
My name is Christina and I’m new here at hangletonweblogs!
I had my first post here on the site on June 29th about the speculation around the USMS Bitcoin auction and was originally going to make another post introducing myself to the community on Monday but all of the continuing coverage of the USMS Auction notifications sort of got in the way.
When I first decided I wanted to write about cryptocurrency I was unsure where I would go, where I would start and I found a post on reddit asking for contributors to the site. A few weeks later and here we are!
I’m not a professional journalist. I won’t pretend to be. I’m just a person who writes what I see and sometimes that will come in the form of editorials.
Mike seems to have the most breaking news and reviews covered along with Brendon so it is my hope that I can bring great editorial content to the site.
I’m excited to be here and can’t wait to publish a few pieces that I’ve been working on!
The winners and losers of the USMS Bitcoin auction have been notified and the auction has been completed and closed.
Tim Draper was the winner of the auction, more details here.
Prior to the coins being moved a verified source with the USMS who wishes to remain anonymous stated to hangletonweblogs, “It is really important that we get this 100% right. We have to verify that they aren’t tied to any sort of criminal activity, we have to verify we have the money from the wire transfer. If we send the coins we understand we will have no way to reverse the transaction so every step is being taken.”
At approximately 3:39PM EDT coins contained in the USMS controlled wallet: 1Ez69SnzzmePmZX3WpEzMKTrcBF2gpNQ55 moved to a new destination address of: 1a8LDh3qtCdMFAgRXzMrdvB8w1EG4h1Xi
We can tell you who weren’t the winners however at this time. Alex Waters a board member for Coin.co has lost with a bid of $403. He said that he had intentionally bid below the market rate because he was expecting several of the bidders to be disqualified by the United States Marshall Service.
Barry Silbert of BIT investment fund has also announced that they were unable to secure any blocks in the auction on behalf of the syndicate. As of 4:23PM EDT he, the BIT nor SecondMarket have made a statement regarding the price that they had bid in the auction.
Announcement: The SecondMarket / Bitcoin Investment Trust bidding syndicate for the US Marshals bitcoin auction was outbid on all blocks
— Barry Silbert (@barrysilbert) June 30, 2014
hangletonweblogs has also learned that Josh Jones the co-founder of DreamHost and now Angel investor in Chartio and WP Engine also had placed a bid for $451.13 and was also not a winner.
Reuters is also reporting that Dan Morehead and Pantera Capital was not a winner of any blocks in the USMS auction. He declined to offer the bid price that they had submitted as well.
We also learned that Bill Lee a noted angel investor in Tesla and SpaceX had also placed a bid for the bitcoins and was notified that it was not a winning bid. Chris DeMuth Jr., a partner at Rangeley Capital also confirmed to The New York Times that he was not able to secure a winning bid and declined to reveal his bid but said it was below market value.
USMS Update: “We anticipate making an announcement late this afternoon.” #SilkRoad http://t.co/jdb9ygCLE7
— CoinDesk (@coindesk) July 1, 2014
Chamath Palihapitiya tweeted this morning none of his bids were accepted for the USMS Bitcoin auction.
Bad news: None of our bids were filled in USMS BTC auction. Good news: Results create strong support at $600 if it pushes upward thru EOY.
— Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) July 1, 2014
hangletonweblogs also confirmed that Bitcoin Shop’s bid for the USMS auction was also rejected. Charles Allen, Chief Executive Officer of Bitcoin Shop, commented, “Our bid with the USMS to purchase bitcoins through an online auction was not accepted. As a mechanism to hedge our proposed investment, we also bid through the Second Market syndicate for a smaller allocation, but that bid was not accepted either. After evaluating the current bitcoin currency landscape, we submitted a bid price that, if accepted, reflected our determination of a competitive and attractive value for our investors. Bitcoin Shop will continue to evaluate investment opportunities such as this in the future.”
The winners of the USMS auction of the Silk Road bitcoins will be informed on Monday no later than 5pm EDT. That means by then the losers will also know that they didn’t get to win the bitcoins.
The USMS isn’t likely to make a public announcement of the winners. That just isn’t the style of the auction.
What is likely though is that we are going to learn from a lot of people who didn’t win what they paid. While the winners might not outright come out and say what they paid or even the fact that they won one thing is for sure, a ton of people are going to be saying they didn’t win and likely saying what price they bid.
We don’t know how many people actually bid on the coins and it likely as well we will never know for sure (again not the style of USMS). Even with the email leak it has been said that not everyone was included in that CC all email by admission from the USMS. The number of people could be 10 it could be 100.
Having got that out-of-the-way I am expecting a rather busy trading day on Monday. Lots of people are going to be waiting as the news comes out during the day from the various players. We may even get an unexpected announcement from the BIT that they won (they don’t know yet so anyone stating that Barry one quite frankly is lying at the moment) that could stabilize the market.
What is most likely though is that we are going to see a flood of posts on reddit, Twitter, and other Bitcoin related sites that XYZ says they didn’t win the auction with a bid of $(theoretical dollar level here). The key thing to remember when trading on Monday is that you have to really consider who those people are making those sort of posts.
Are the reddit accounts that were created that day, are they accounts that have been around a while but with very little reputation? Are those tweets coming from someone just looking to troll the prices a bit?
All financial markets are open for manipulation and with Bitcoin this isn’t an exception. Some players are going to be posting on various networks prices to try to get the price to go up and others will be posting to try to make the price go down as a market manipulation tactic to make money.
My suggestion is to wait for reliable news sources such as hangletonweblogs, NewsBTC, Charlie Shrem on Twitter, or Coin Telegraph to make a statement regarding the winners of the auction. Don’t just trust a tweet, don’t just trust a news site that is rushing to get the “breaking news” out the door without fact-checking it.
Be sure that you aren’t taking a risk with money that you can’t afford to lose. Wait for reliable sources to come out and make statements. Wait for verification.
The markets are potentially going to see a lot of volume on Monday as rumors run rampant and uneducated investors simply watch for headlines and trade based on that without doing even just three or four minutes of research.
Don’t just speculate on who might have won, or what the loosing bids were. Wait, watch, and trade carefully.
Strap in, Monday will be fun.
Section of USMS Auction Protocol Document Detailing End of Auction Procedure
Today at 6pm the USMS auction of a portion of the Silk Road seized Bitcoins will be completed.
The auction which has taken place in complete secrecy thus far for 29,656.51306529 could have unknown implications on the market.
As it currently stands we are unaware of the current auction prices, we are unaware which bidders are actually taking part and we are unaware if the USMS is going to release details on the winner of the auction.
At 6pm the bidding will stop and it is likely that over the weekend the person’s bid will be vetted along with several other top bidder to insure that the bidders are in no way connected with the Silk Road and that the bidder does in fact have the necessary funds to cover the entirety of the purchase.
Bids are taken via email in complete secrecy without the bidders knowing without those bidding knowing who is raising the price.
It is unknown at this time if the USMS will make a public statement on Monday once the vetting process is complete as to the final price or the final bidder of the auction as they have not made any announcements regarding that end of the process. It is highly likely based on procedure documents that they will NOT make a public statement.
This afternoon Bitcoin has seen turbulent trading with prices swinging ten or more dollars consistently today and a current gain of $7.
It stands to reason that no bidders will bid above the current market prices and that the sudden potential appearance of this many Bitcoins on the market could have a negative impact – but the price could also rally depending on the final results. We will be keeping an eye on the markets in addition to the latest information for the auction results.
If and when a winner or details are released or leaked we will post them immediately and begin working to vet statements.
It is important to note that the USMS will likely NOT release the name of the winning bidder any sooner than Monday. They will require the additional time to verify the winning bid and bidders.
SecondMarket and the Bitcoin Investment Trust are offering members a way to bid on the US Auction on Bitcoins seized from the Silk Road via proxy through SecondMarket.
An email distributed to members this morning reads:
As you may be aware, the U.S. Marshals Service is planning to auction off approximately 30,000 bitcoins. SecondMarket intends on participating in this auction and is allowing qualified customers to submit orders for aggregation into bids to be submitted by SecondMarket in the auction process. Participation through SecondMarket will generally be simpler than direct participation in the auction:
- Smaller minimum bid size ($50k versus ~3,000 bitcoin blocks)
- Lower upfront capital commitment (bid amount versus $200k deposit plus proof of funds)
- Support for multiple bids at different bid prices with smaller minimum sizes
- Private participation in the auction (bidder identity will not be revealed to the U.S. Marshals office)
- Open to non-US investors
Full details and instructions can be accessed on the SecondMarket platform. To learn more and to participate, create an account on the SecondMarket auction portal. If you already have an account, simply log into the SecondMarket auction portal. Please note that an account on the SecondMarket portal is separate from the New Account Profile (NAP) that you may have filled out with us in the past.
The order deadline will be Thursday, June 26 at 12pm ET by which time all submissions must be complete including receipt of wire payments for bid amounts. All orders in place as of Thursday, June 26 at 12pm ET will be deemed fully binding and irrevocable.
Please note that ten percent of all auction fees received by SecondMarket from successful syndicate participants in the auction will be donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization supportive of bitcoin and more broadly dedicated to promoting technology, innovation and the protection of rights in the digital world.
Best regards,
SecondMarket and the Bitcoin Investment Trust bitcoinauction@secondmarket.com
This is an interesting concept as this could allow users to potentially purchase smaller levels of coins by syndicating a large group to purchase them.
It does however lead to several questions regarding the purchase because the US Marshall service has stated in the FAQ regarding the auction:
Can I form a syndicate of buyers? The person or entity that registers to bid on this auction must satisfy all registration requirements, including certifying that the bidder is not acting in concert with the defendant or defendant entity. This certification extends and applies to all members of a syndicate. The primary bidder should perform whatever due diligence the bidder feels is necessary in order to comfortably make that certification.
Which means that each member of the syndicate will need to provide some sort of documentation. As it stands the details have not yet been outlined by SecondMarket but it is highly likely that they are going to address this and other potential issues as SecondMarket is lead and made up by several qualified US Investors.