Victorian police confiscated the bitcoins as proceeds of crime, although only registered bidders will find out who from Auctioneers expect strong interest in the auction of 24,518 bitcoins, each of which is currently valued at about $530.Photograph: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images Victorian police confiscated the bitcoins as proceeds of crime, although only registered bidders will find out who from About $13m in bitcoins will be auctioned in Sydney in June after Victorian police confiscated the digital currency as proceeds of crime.Ernst & Young is running the process, which is only the second such bitcoin auction in the world after the US Marshals Service sold 144,000 bitcoins over a two-year period that had been confiscated from Ross Ulbricht, who founded the online drug bazaar Silk Road, the accountancy firm’s transaction partner, Adam Nikitins, said.Based on Tuesday’s single bitcoin price of $533.80, the cache of cryptocurrency is valued at almost $13.1m.Nikitins expects strong interest in the auction since the bitcoin price has become less volatile after the US auctions.

Ernst & Young has received expressions of interest from the United States, Europe and Australia, he said.“Over the last few months, the price of bitcoins has been steadily rising and the volatility has gone out of it,” Nikitins said.Nikitins would not say who the bitcoins were confiscated from, but said registered bidders would be told.The Victoria state government has confirmed that it seized about 24,500 bitcoins in late 2013 from a Melbourne drug dealer.Richard Pollard, 32, was sentenced in the Melbourne county court in October to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to drug trafficking on the Silk Road website.The haul of bitcoins will be mostly sold in lots of about 2,000.Bitcoin is a digital currency that allows people to buy goods and services and exchange money without involving banks, credit card issuers or other third parties.The coins are created by users who “mine” them by lending computing power to verify other users’ transactions, receiving bitcoins in exchange.

Bitcoins also can be bought and sold on exchanges with US dollars and other currencies.Their value has fluctuated over time.At its height in late 2013, a single bitcoin was valued above $1,100.Bidders can register until 7 June for the 24,518 bitcoins on offer.The 48-hour sealed auction will take place from 20 June.The Victorian government will sell millions of dollars worth of bitcoins on the open market in coming months after taking possession of assets confiscated from a Warrandyte drug dealer.The bitcoins were seized in late 2013, but the state's Asset Confiscation Operations (ACO) had to wait until the man's case had been heard in the court system.A spokesman confirmed it has recently taken possession of 24,500 coins and would try to make the most of it."The Department of Justice and Regulation's ACO unit is assessing options for selling the bitcoins in this case.With the volatility in price for bitcoins, it is important that the sale of the coins on the open market is done at a time and way to get the best value," he said.

This haul was worth $32 million in late 2013, when bitcoins reached a peak of $1100 apiece, but was now worth about $9.3 million, with bitcoins selling at about $377.Bitcoins were created in 2008 for trading within computer games and online shops, and for transferring money online.bitcoin valor en pesos colombianosThey are usually traded in fractions depending on how much money users want to transfer.litecoin currency converterAn average of 136,000 coins, or $US53 million ($69 million) worth, were traded every day worldwide, according to the blockchain.info website.withdraw bitcoin from btc-eTheir value has fluctuated due to speculation and as businesses and governments accept or reject it as a legitimate currency.bitcoin lua

The price of bitcoin dropped in early 2014 after one trading site collapsed and others were investigated for hacking and fraud.The Reserve Bank of Australia noted in a submission to a Senate inquiry that "digital currencies are privately created assets with no intrinsic value, so their market price at any time is very sensitive to perceptions about what, if any, value they will have in the future".bitcoin prices plungeChief executive of bitcoin trading site CoinJar, Asher Tan, said he believed bitcoins would trade between $400 and $500 this year.litecoin browserHe said timing the sale would depend on "how bullish the Victorian government is about bitcoins in general" but that selling all the coins in Australia would depress the local market.The Department would not say how it plans to sell the coins.Mr Tan recommended using a United States or European wholesale market and auctioning small blocks of coins, as US authorities have done.

Proceeds of the sale go towards the state's consolidated revenue.The ACO confiscated the coins from Richard Pollard, 32, of Warrandyte, who was sentenced in the County Court in Melbourne last October to 11 years' jail after pleading guilty to commercial trafficking.He has lodged an appeal against his sentence.The court heard Pollard ran a "one-stop shop" on the Silk Road website.He trafficked 2.8 kilograms of MDMA, 876 grams of ice, 44 grams of cocaine, 30 grams of ketamine, as well as fentanyl, methorphan and poisons between August and December, 2012.Police also found 61 cannabis plants.A collection of bitcoins worth about £8m, which had been confiscated by police in Australia, will be auctioned off in June.The 24,518 bitcoins will be sold mostly in blocks of 2,000 - each with a market value of about £680,000.Ernst & Young, the firm organising the auction, said the bitcoins had been "confiscated as proceeds of crime" but did not elaborate on the case.One expert said the authorities had chosen a "safe" time to sell.Australian newspapers have previously reported that 24,500 bitcoins were seized by police in the state of Victoria in 2013, after a man was arrested for dealing illegal drugs online.

In 2015, Victoria's Asset Confiscation Operations department "confirmed it had recently taken possession of 24,500 coins and would try to make the most of it", according to the Sydney Morning Herald."Thisis a significant amount of Bitcoin," Dr Garrick Hileman, economic historian at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, told the BBC."It's about a week's worth of new Bitcoin that comes onto the market through mining."Currentlyabout 4,000 new bitcoins are generated a day, as a reward for "miners" who offer their computer power to process Bitcoin transactions.The seized coins are auctioned in blocks because quickly selling a large number of coins for cash at a Bitcoin exchange could negatively affect the market."Generallythe view is that any time 10,000 bitcoins sell, the market price can be moved significantly," said Dr Hileman.The price of Bitcoin rose to $530 (£362) on Friday, its highest level since August 2014.Dr Hileman said the Australian authorities had chosen a "safe" time to sell because there is some uncertainty about what will happen to the value of Bitcoin in July."The

Bitcoin protocol is designed to reduce the number of new bitcoins miners are given as a reward for processing transactions every four years."Thereward will be halved on 14 July, so prices could go up due to the reduced supply of new bitcoins."Butthere is a question about whether security could decline, if rewards for miners are reduced significantly.So it's a safe time to sell, as there is no guarantee about what might happen in July."TheAustralian Bitcoin auction, which will be open to bidders worldwide, is the first such sale outside of the US.In 2014, the US Marshals Service began auctioning a collection of about 175,000 bitcoins that had been confiscated from the founder of internet marketplace Silk Road.The final auction of those bitcoins attracted 11 bidders, possibly due to the high cost of each block on sale.Dr Hileman said the sale of Bitcoin by the Australian authorities was an acknowledgement that the cryptocurrency was not illegal."Anytime a government sells Bitcoin, it is acknowledging that this is a different asset to drugs, for example, that would not be sold in an auction," he told the BBC."That