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US Marshals will auction 50,000 Bitcoins seized from Silk Road

Want a virtual piece of law enforcement history? You're about to get your chance. The US Marshal's Service is holding an auction on December 4th that will sell off 50,000 Bitcoins from Ross Ulbricht (aka Dread Pirate Roberts), the alleged founder of the black market website Silk Road. You'll need plenty of real-world cash to get your hands on this digital currency, though. The feds are selling the digital currency in batches of 2,000 to 3,000 coins, and you'll need to place a minimum $100,000 deposit by December 1st to claim one of them. Not exactly an impulse purchase, then. At least this isn't the last auction you'll see -- police seized a total of 144,000 Bitcoins in the Silk Road bust last year, and roughly half of them have yet to go on sale.

[Image credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer]