USMS Auction Winner Speculation

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 Coin Fire, 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.