Last week, 50,000 Bitcoins valued at $18.6 million were auctioned off by the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS).

Tim Draper, the sole winner of the first auction, announced he was able to successfully bid on a lot of 2,000 Bitcoins on behalf of Draper Associates. He says these Bitcoins will be used to invest 300 BTC in every startup in the current session of Boost, a program created by Adam Draper, his son, to assist crypto-related startups.

So who were the other bidders for the remaining 48,000 Bitcoins?

The USMS announced that the remaining 48,000 Bitcoins were acquired by a bidding syndicate organised by the Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT) and the trading division of SecondMarket Holdings, Inc. The bidding syndicate secured 19 of the 20 Bitcoin blocks, which amounts to around $16.9 million worth of BTC.

SecondMarket managing director Brendan O’Connor was quite excited about the feat.

“When you put a lot of effort into something like this you want to win, you want to be able to bear some fruit and show some results. For all the folks internally that spent a lot of time and effort on this it was a very good conclusion,” O’ Connor enthused.

O’Connor clarified that SecondMarket itself was not a bidder. Instead, the Bitcoins were won by the participants of the syndicate. The total amount paid for the 48,000 Bitcoins was not disclosed, but SecondMarket stated that all the Bitcoins have already been distributed to the winners in the syndicate.

The angle

O’Connor explained that the firm’s interest in participating in the auction was driven by the need to help interested parties participate without going through the daunting authorization process.

“[It was] for folks out there that wanted to participate in having a chance to win some fairly large blocks of bitcoin that do not come to the market all that frequently without having to go through the trouble of actually going through the approval process with the USMS,” he said.

There were significantly fewer bidders for this round of the auction compared to the one before, and O’Connor said the recent Thanksgiving holiday may have played a part in this.

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