USMS to hold final Silk Road Bitcoin auction before year end

The US Marshals Service (USMS) has suggested it is likely to auction off any remaining bitcoins seized in the Silk Road investigation sometime in 2015, CoinDesk reports. It will be the final auction with 44,336 BTC ($10m at press time) being offered up to prospective investors.

The USMS confiscated over 144,000 BTC (worth $122m at the time) in total from Ross Ulbricht in late 2013 along with 29,655 BTC held in wallets on the online dark marketplace at the time of its closure. Ulbricht is serving his 20 year prison sentence in one of the US prisons at present for running the dark internet marketplace.

A spokesperson for the USMS told CoinDesk, "We still don't have any dates to announce, but do expect to [hold the event] before the end of the year."

So far, three auctions have been held to auction off the bitcoins, open to qualified members of the US public. The last one was held in March, which saw 14 bidders competing to purchase 50,000 BTC (then worth $13.4m); with a mysterious bitcoin firm Cumberland Mining winning the majority of 27,000 bitcoins.