"In civil forfeiture cases, the US Government sues the item of property, not the person; the owner is effectively a third party claimant. The burden is on the Government to establish that the property is subject to forfeiture by a "preponderance of the evidence." If it is successful, the owner may yet prevail by establishing an "innocent owner" defense.
In civil cases, the owner need not be judged guilty of any crime; it is possible for the Government to prevail by proving that someone other than the owner used the property to commit a crime. In contrast, criminal forfeiture is usually carried out in a sentence following a conviction and is a punitive act against the offender.
The United States Marshals Service is responsible for managing and disposing of properties seized and forfeited by Department of Justice agencies. It currently manages around $2.4 billion worth of property. The United States Treasury Department is responsible for managing and disposing of properties seized by Treasury agencies. The goal of both programs is to maximize the net return from seized property by selling at auctions and to the private sector and then using the property and proceeds for law enforcement purposes."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture#United_States
Since the Government sues the property itself, and since property itself has few if any rights, you can understand how the entire process becomes rather... one sided.
In this case there's abundant evidence of a criminal enterprise involving the sale of drugs, attempts to purchase the services of hitmen etc. etc. So 'Dread Pirate Roberts' only likely defense is to claim something along the lines of 3v1l H4x0rs taking over his computer for the last several years while he played minesweeper or suchlike, and disavow any awareness of of or custody over the money; otherwise he'd have to explain just how he came to be in possession of several $m of BTC that was sent to Silk Road.
This is interesting as an example of BTC's strength being a vulnerability. Suppose you were arrested in a warehouse with a pile of cash and numerous bricks of cocaine, AK-47s, etc. Of course the government would claim you're a drug dealer, but you could attempt to convince the court that you had won the money in Vagas/sold a great deal of pizza/whatever and been kidnapped by evil drug dealers on your way to the bank, only to wake up alone and confused next to your cash in the warehouse just before the cops arrived. An unlikely story to be sure, but there are many legal means through which you might come to possess a large stack of currency (and which might also provide you with a much-needed alibi, eg video of you winning big and leaving the casino only to be waylaid on the strip by masked bandits). Where BTC is concerned, though, the blockchain itself is proof that the money was sent to the receiving address given out by Silk Road in exchange for contraband, so the government has a prima facie case that it consists of revenue from a criminal enterprise.
The real losers here are the Silk Road users who just forfeited whatever they had sitting in the site's coffers. Even if someone made the unwise decision to come forward and say, 'I used the site legally and that's my money,' the feds could still say it was a site devoted mainly to illegal activity and so that argument is moot.
If they are clever, they won't put everything on the market like this.
Selling at the immediate price they can get in a very volatile vehicle is not 'handing them out at random'.
Price movements occur as a result of a buyer or seller aggressing into a market and submitting an order such that the parameters of the aggressor's order match the opposite sides unfilled orders. This process is typically referred to as order matching. If a buyer aggresses into the market and matches against unfilled sell orders the price increases because they have removed the lowest prices from the order book. If a seller does something similar the price will drop because the highest prices have been removed.
Another reason price movements occur is because people are also reacting to the market and trying to predict where the market is going. As a consequence they will either enter the market at an off market price attempting to predict it, or cancel their outstanding orders and re-price them. But this is another topic entirely and I will leave it out as it's pretty complex and my understanding of that topic is newb level at best.
The second thing to consider is the why. Why do price movements occur? Mainly because people are consuming information and trying to predict where the market is going. For other assets such as FX & commodities there are non-speculative market participants who buy and sell based on their business need. An example from Foreign Exchange is a company such as Google having a stockpile of dollars and needing to pay employees in euros. The end result of these non-speculative market participants is greater price stability because they are always buying or always selling, not because they want to, but because they have to. But since bitcoin is largely a speculative currency (the majority of bitcoin trading volume is the result of speculation, not legitimate commerce) the news has a disproportionate effect on it's prices.
My 2 cents say that this will temporarily depress prices but they will quickly recover because someone such as myself recognizes that those bitcoins haven't entered the market, so nothing has really changed.
Consider if all governments outlaw it simultaneously. The market participants currently consist of free market type enthusiasts & hobbyists, rich celebrity speculators, drug dealers and cyber criminals. I think it is a fair assumption that most of the active traders are currently from the hobbyist & enthusiast category. Additionally when you consider that places like Silicon Valley and other hubs around the world have a large proportion tech savvy workers who make a lot more than subsistence wages, it's not too hard to see how some sort of speculative market could continue to lumber along without much reason for existence. Look at sports betting and horse racing.
If the government were to come out and drop the hammer, however, I think most of these people (myself included) would vanish. The volume would dry up and the only people left in the market would be criminals and people with a hard requirement for virtually untraceable digital currency, prison be damned. My opinion is that these people would continue to remain using it as a means of commerce and store of value provided that the underlying cryptography & p2p network remain sound and un-compromised. There are currently millions of bitcoin in existence so a price of near zero would probably satisfy the black market. How does $3 sound as a reasonable number that readers can use against me in the probable event that I turn out to be wrong 5 years from now?
Of course this all relies on the underlying cryptography and associated peer to peer network remaining sound and trustworthy. If a party is able to compromise the underlying encryption or execute a double spend by attacking the network then trust in bitcoin as a finite commodity would be irrevocably destroyed. No one would ever use it, thus a $0 price.
The utility of bitcoin is just too hard to ignore from a commerce perspective. It's taking away authority and power from banks to act as gate keepers to their countries finical & economic system and putting it in the hands of the people who engage in commerce themselves. I don't believe banks will cease to exist as some of bitcoin's most ardent supports hope it will, but the transaction costs for international business could drop substantially. Barring bad news on the legislative or technology front the only thing stopping bitcoin from gaining greater adoption is that too many people are psychologically fixated on an individual bitcoin. Bitcoin is sub divisible up to 8 decimal places, the vast majority of people who have heard about bitcoin that I have talked to do not realize this. Since the total number of bitcoins is fixed at 21 million this yields a total number of theoretical units of currency of 210 trillion. That's a pretty formidable island on which to create a base of trade on.
But if they set a flat sell price then that'd make a buy (edit: sell) wall (price can not go above this amount until all 25 million have been purchased).
The sell wall could help stabilize the price.
Perhaps I misunderstood you?
Scenario 1:
There is a single large buyer. Assuming the buyer and US goverment are smart, they will recognize the liquidity risk of Bitcoin. The buyer will then get a discount for this and be able to purchase the coins at a below market rate. Assuming their plan is to hold onto the coins for the long term (or at least not short term), I wouldn't expect a large movement in the general Bitcoin markets.
Scenario 2:
There are many small buyers. Each sale would slightly effect the price of Bitcoin as each sale would slowly satisfy demand. The US government might receive $850 per coin for the first sale, but certainly wouldn't for the last sale. This would cause the biggest harm to the market as the price would drop more than in scenario 1.
TL;DR - The US government either needs to accept a lower price for the sake of liquidity or accept that their sales will quickly lower the market rate for Bitcoin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume-weighted_average_price
For all other asset classes VWAP execution is a thing and a common one at that. Basic idea is split your large order up into slices and sell small amounts during a given interval. Bitstamp & BTCE have 24 hour volume of ~18k bitcoins. As a fun aside, if you don't randomize your time slice someone like me will see what you're doing and move the market to screw you :).
Buyer and Gov settle as a well below market price, possibly to rid of these e-tokens. Buyer then floods the market with cheap coins that are still a markup from what he bought them at. Market panics ($1000 vs $100), price of bitcoins drops.
In other words, it will likely affect both the supply of and demand for Bitcoin.
It is already pretty transparent: http://blockchain.info/
At least they won't sell it via usual exchanges in one go. That would make quite a mess... (bringing price down to ~0 for a while before everything rebalances)
The feds selling the bitcoin would be an endorsement of it and the market they used to sell as being legal. This could push the price up.
Options are derivative products that other people offer. They looks at statistical volatility and price their options, such that they make some $ on average. This means you can short bitcoin, just like anything else - you need to find someone offering the service.
[0] http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/12/05/betting-against-bi...
I wouldn't doubt they are trying to use their network to get hold of these...
Don't let them get away with it, folks.
Or is your argument based solely on the lack of conviction - which is more worthy of discussion?
