You know that one time you accidentally hit “reply all” at work and sent something kinda embarrassing and inappropriate to all of your colleagues? If that still makes you cringe, take comfort in the fact that the US government just one-upped you massively.

The US Marshal service, which is auctioning off about $18 million worth of Bitcoin seized in the Silk Road raid in 2013, accidentally replied all to the list of auction participants, leaking the names of each participant to one another.

Relevant background

The Marshals have about 30,000 BTC that will go up for auction June 27.

Here is what CoinDesk’s Daniel Cawrey wrote a week ago:

“The US Marshals Service (USMS) has effectively split the 30,000 BTC into nine blocks of 3,000 BTC and 1 block of 2,656.51306529 BTC, known as ‘Series A’ and ‘Series B’ blocks, respectively.

All interested buyers must register with the US Marshals Service (USMS) in order to be eligible for the auction. Aspiring participants must provide the following to the federal agency:

  • A $200,000 deposit sent by wire transfer from a bank located in the US
  • A copy of a government-issued photo ID
  • A manually signed PDF copy of the bidder registration form.”

About 40 bidders qualified, and the Marshals Service tried to send each bidder an informational email. Instead, the bidders found out who everyone was. A statement from the government read:

“One of the emails that we sent out this morning inadvertently showed a list of some of the individuals who have asked a question or questions about the pending Bitcoin auction. We apologize for the error.”

Confirmed bidders

A few names stepped forward and confirmed their participation as bidders to CoinDesk. Those names include SecondMarket and the Bitcoin Investment Trust, Pantera Capital, and Binary Financial.

SecondMarket and the Bitcoin Investment Trust are inviting participants to join in the auction.

“SecondMarket and the Bitcoin Investment Trust expect to participate in the auction and will allow others to submit bids for aggregation in the process,” a signup page reads. Anyone interested in participating can sign up here by June 20. (Note: Bidders will need to have a US bank account and identify themselves to the US government.)

CoinDesk reports that investment management company Binary Financial will bid on all nine blocks.

Finally, Pantera Capital has been more mum about its participation, noting that only investors are interested in the auction.

Other bidders will participate in the auction beside those organizations listed above, though. Most of those bidders remain either unknown or at least unconfirmed at this point (which was the whole idea to begin with, but that ship has already sailed).

CoinDesk reports the following people were on that “Reply All” list: