Results of our US Marshals bitcoin syndicate:
Bids received - 104
BTC quantity bid - 124,127
Winners notified by USMS today
BIT SYNDICATE ALONE HAD FOR 124.127 BTC BIDS???
In principle, the syndicate is not trying to buy coins for Barry Silbert, SecondMarket, or the SMBIT fund.
The syndicate collects money from small bidders (starting at 25 k$ minimum bid) and joins them into the 1000 or 2000 BTC bids for the USMS auction. If any of these merged bid makes it to the winners list, SecondMarket distributes the coins to the corresponding small bidders, and collects a fee for its service. Otherwise they return the money to the small bidders, and shrug off their wasted work.
They had 104 small bidders which together wanted to buy 124'127 BTC. Obviously when they assembled the bids for the USMS auction it would be pointless to bid for more than 50'000 BTC. So they must have considered the highest among those small bids, until completing 50'000 BTC, and rejected the rest.
One cannot tell from those numbers whether any of the bids were above or below market.Not with great certainty, no, but the number of bids, and the fact that it is a syndicate raises the chances that, just like last time, the BIT consortium will be bidding below market. To me it just makes no sense to buy 2-5k thru a syndicate, in an auction, and bid over market price. Who would do such a thing? The smaller the fish, the lower the bids ... else they would buy on an exchange. Yes, I realise there are exceptions to this, but I am sticking to my theory that no syndicate will bid above market, and that a lot of syndicate members are just opportunists looking for a quick buck or deep discounted coins.
