The U.S. Marshals Service will auction another 50,000 Bitcoins and the hacked exchange Bter is lis considering selling itself. Here are the cryptocurrency highlights of week 8:
- The U.S. Marshals Service has scheduled another auction for 50,000 Bitcoins it seized from online drug market place Silk Road. The block is currently worth about $12 million, and only a limited part of the 144,341 Bitcoins that were seized from Silk Road in total. So far, 80,000 coins have already been auctioned off in two previous auctions.
- A year after the collapse of the once biggest Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox a report has now been published that reveals more details on Willy, the trading bot that Mt.Gox allegedly used to manipulate Bitcoin price levels. According to the report by WizSec: “Willy bought a very large amount of bitcoin [250,000 BTC in total] on MtGox … There is a very high probability that this had a large effect on the price of bitcoin”. The report also suggest that Willy could have been operated by Mt.Gox employees.
- Cryptocurrency exchange Bter has stated that it is unable to immediately compensate its customers for the 7,170 ($1.7 million) Bitcoins that were recently lost as a result of a hack attack. Bter is now looking for other ways to compensate its customers, including the option to sell the exchange itself. Bter still offers a reward of 720 BTC to anyone who can help finding the lost coins, but so far the hacker has not been caught yet.
- The “happiest” cryptocurrency Dogecoin has had an “evil” twin called DogeCoinDark for a while now, but it suddenly made headlines this week when its value went up by more than six times. Since nothing obvious fundamentally changed for DogeCoinDark, it is likely just honoring its name being part of a shady pump-and-dump scheme.
- The price of Bitcoin did not go anywhere this week. One coin is currently trading at $244, which is just $1 less than one week ago. As usual, the week was far from as boring as the previous might suggest. The price fluctuated between $231 and $265 per Bitcoin.
