Probably so. What do they do with gold or silver bars I wonder? This whole thing is just dumb. 2000X10,000= $20,000,000 Who in their right mind is going to risk losing upwards of 20% of 20M by bidding early? There's certainly an arbitrage opportunity here because the answer to that question is.... nobody will. (Unless they are extreme lowballers) All the bids are going to come in with minutes left, assuming they can be submitted digitally... or if they have to be in writing... then via a courier service at the last seconds available. I think someone will make at least 15% of the $20M+ overnight. Assuming that cashing out with that size doesn't put too much downward pressure on the bid.
I don't think anybody who is buying in going to flip it overnight. The billionaire old guy who bought at the last marshal sale for millions for $250 (I think they overpaid at the time) is laughing now. Just because it is illogical to have a wide window for the bids that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a window. The whole point of buying in big batches is that it doesn't depress the price...
To amusing to see them auction off a make believe coin made out of thin air....funny how this becomes news, in years to come when these are trading for 90% Less than what they are today this won't even make headlines.
Also last time it was a silent auction, meaning that the highest bidders got the coins, but the bids were not seen. So you had to bet your highest offer to make sure you get something...
I was going to say the same thing, but glad someone else mentioned it. There is value in buying in a big batch as the order book on exchanges will be significantly affected by a large buy order or sell order. The volume is much bigger now than during their past sales, so this may not be the case any longer. (There are pre-arranged order matching performed by big exchanges i.e. Bitstamp and it came to light when Circle bought Poloniex that Circle is also in that business for orders of $250K or higher) I'll mention it again, someone working for the government has no incentive to maximize profits on this event. Let me walk you through the process, if one of the ET stars was the government employee in charge of selling all these bitcoins, and he was a good employee and used his magical selling-algo systems, got the best price possible, hoorah. His performance review happens once or twice a year, so in 3-6 months, if bitcoin price is higher, he will look bad, if it's lower, ok, nothing. Plus there may be a scandal that the govnmnt employees involved could warn their friends whenever they dump... You get the idea. Better to just have an auction for it, highest price is $10,000 take them, the employees go back to watching youtube videos.
For the seller, silent auction is the best way to get the biggest bang for the coins. Plus a government doesn't want to deal with a broker in Poland...