Venture capitalist Tim Draper
Venture capitalist Tim Draper, a big bitcoin believer and investor in related startups, came forward Wednesday as the winning bidder in the 27th June auction of roughly 30,000 BTC conducted by the U.S. Marshals Service.
The USMC, which organized the auction of the coins seized from the now-defunct market Silk Road, confirmed Draper won the auction.
Many of Draper’s fellow bidders were likely looking for a bargain price to help them flip the cryptocurrency into quick profit — with the market value of such a stash at about $19 million.
But venture capitalist Draper wanted it known that he is interested in investing in more bitcoin startups in emerging markets, primarily through a partnership with the new bitcoin exchange Vaurum.
“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,” Draper said in a statement through Vaurum. “We want to enable people to hold and trade bitcoin to secure themselves against weakening currencies.”
Avish Bhama, the co-founder and chief executive of Vaurum, said the goal was not to dump the 30,000 coins on the open market. Bhama and Draper hoped to expand Bitcoin’s utility in areas of the world where access to the currency is now challenging, including India, South America and parts of Asia.“This is a very long-term thesis that we have where we want to increase the supply and facilitate the usage of bitcoin in emerging economies,” Bhama said.
Draper was part of a group that invested $4 million in Vaurum in May.
The Marshals Service said on Monday that 45 registered bidders had taken part in the auction and that it had received 63 bids. Several prominent players in the bitcoin community, including Barry Silbert of SecondMarket, Pantera Bitcoin and Coinbase, submitted unsuccessful bids.
July 03, 2014 at 07:37AM
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