NEW YORK — Venture capitalist Tim Draper has been identified as the single winning bidder for a cache of bitcoins at a US government auction, part of a larger pool of the virtual currency seized from the Silk Road website.
Draper, the co-founder of investment firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, will work with startup Vaurum to help provide access to bitcoins in developing economies and use the about 30,000 bitcoins won in the auction as a source of liquidity, according to a statement that Vaurum posted on publishing service Medium on Wednesday.
‘‘Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy with weak currencies,’’ Draper said in the statement. ‘‘With the help of Vaurum and this newly purchased bitcoin, we expect to be able to create new services that can provide liquidity and confidence to markets that have been hamstrung by weak currencies.’’
The auction attracted 45 bidders, including New York brokerage SecondMarket, and 63 bids were submitted during the 12 hours of the auction on June 27, according to the US Marshals Service. The agency, which said Tuesday it notified the bidder and transferred the money, did not disclose the winner’s identity.
The auction of 29,656 bitcoins, part of more than 144,000 the FBI transferred to US Marshals after shutting down the Silk Road marketplace and arresting its operator last year on charges the site served as a marketplace for illicit deals, represented a rare opportunity to secure a large cache of the virtual currency. While the actual price of the winning bid isn’t known, the cache sold on June 30 was worth about $19 million at current exchange prices.
Vaurum is a Palo Alto, Calif., startup that enables companies to trade and store bitcoins on behalf of customers.