The final US government auction has begun today and will last 6 hours until the last portion of 44,341 BTC of the Silk Road's legacy is sold out.

The bitcoins were confiscated in 2013 from the laptop of Ross Ulbricht, who ran darknet market Silk Road and was sentenced to life in prison in may 2015 for money laundering and drug trafficking.

The auction includes 21 blocks of 2,000 bitcoins and one block of remaining 2,341 bitcoins. Bids are accepted via email from pre-registered bidders. Winners will be notified on Friday. For the registration the US agency requested to submit a photo ID and to send a deposit of $100,000 from a US bank, though foreign citizens were allowed to participate as well. Digital Currency Group and Binary Financial are among registered bidders.

Since the seizure of the Silk Road's bitcoins in October 2013 three auctions have been held: in June and December 2014 the sums of 30,000 BTC and 50,000 BTC respectively were put on sale, and the third auction of 50,000 BTC took place last March. The first portion was won by the venture capitalist Tim Draper, while the majority of the second auction's coins were bought by the Bitcoin Investment Trust bidding syndicate, leaving Draper only remaining 2,000 BTC. During the third auction 50,000 bitcoins were split between three winners, who received 27,000 BTC, 20,000 BTC, and 3,000 BTC respectively. The only revealed winner was ItBit exchange, which secured one block of 3,000 BTC. The final fourth auction was announced in October and the registration started on October 19.

Sonya Belova