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Comment by simmerup | Hacker News Reader

Does this mean the US government is about to convert $3 billion worth of Bitcoin into USD?

If so I wonder how the crypto market will react to that

They auction it off so it's not like they are going to dump it all on an exchange or something. In the past it hasn't really effected much.

liquid market: think of it as $3B worth of demand-for-BTC that's *not* buying bitcoin on the spot market and propping up the buy-side of the exchanges...

A lot of bulk purchasers of crypto already do this via dark pools, at a discount, to avoid tanking the spot price.

And one way to get “clean” bitcoins, because they have been washed. Presuming you can buy small amounts from whomever buys them in bulk.

I am interested in crypto, but I really don’t want to be a retail schmuck buying tainted coins. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30224637S

This happened over a year ago if I remember correctly so I suspect the government has already sold a lot of it.

I'm pretty sure they either sold it or used it too. The article does state it was unusual they didn't consult the authority that fined him.

Less than one percent of circulating BTC. I don't think it will even register.

It responded to Tesla's short for less.

That is not how it works, the price will move via market liquidity - the people buying / selling bitcoin at a given time, the coins sitting in wallets (over 90%) have no effect. This source says it took $91M to move the price of bitcoin by 1% (about a year ago), bigger shifts could have a cascading effect. https://cointelegraph.com/news/bank-of-america-claims-it-cos...

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