I doubt one person will buy them all for market price again. The last guy got burnt and has like 1/3 of his money.
That said, these auctions are actually good for the ecosystem I think. It gives some big players a change to dip into the Bitcoin coin system. There are some super rich people that can't be bothered with buying a few Bitcoins at a time. This is an easy way for them to pick up 10 million worth of Bitcoin at once and not stress about it.
It is rumored that Draper is going to bid for the coins being sold in this auction as well. Also IIRC bitcoin was trading around $650 when the USMS announced that one person won the all of the coins in the auction and bitcoin is now trading at around $380 so he lost closer to 40% then 2/3 of his money. It is also not known how much of a discount he got from his winning bid.
I don't think he will bid on all of the lots this time around as the price has generally been falling recently and he could have instead have been buying on an exchange during the recent "slow motion" crash
I meant to say lost like 1/3 of his money. My brain must have been foggy. You are right on the numbers.
I also didn't know that Draper might have got different prices on different lots.
If he does go at this lot again, that will definitely make a lot of people take notice.
Well he said that he intends to create some kind of company that will make bitcoin accessible to people in third world countries where bitcoin has traditionally not been accessible. IMO this likely means that he will operate some kind of exchange (maybe like coinbase but for third world countries). I would think that he intends to sell the coins at some kind of markup (and/or have a largish spread between the buy and sell price) and does not want to have his cost basis be public so he can avoid any kind of public outcry over profiting from selling his coins to people in third world countries at a large profit.
I agree that people will certainly notice if he does win any of the coins in this auction and it would probably start a number of rumors.