The auction was announced on May 30th and takes place over a 48-hour period that began at 12:01am AEST on the June 20th. As previously reported, the Bitcoins were confiscated by law enforcement officials from an Australian native in late 2014 in connection with a narcotics investigation.
Binary Financial, a Silicon Valley-based Bitcoin buying service, has been identified as an auction participant who will be entering bids as part of the event, according to coindesk.com.
US auction participants including itBit and Pantera Capital said they will not be entering bids, while Genesis Mining and Cumberland Mining, two New York-based trading firms, had not responded to requests for additional information, the site continued.
The price of Bitcoin has seen rapid appreciation in recent weeks ahead of a long-planned network change called the halving. The halving has long been of interest to speculators as it marks the start of the amount of new Bitcoins minted daily declining by 50%, though experts debate the exact impetus of the price increase.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now