Wilsons Auctions is one of the Northern Ireland’s most important independent auction companies in the UK.
They have organized a public sell-off of Monero (XMR) tokens which have been previously seized by the British law enforcement agencies. This auction began yesterday.
The bid is basically an online event, and the crypto enthusiasts who are taking part in it have the option to view the current price of each one of the lots and place their offer.
Wilsons Auctions has organized more auctions of seized assets over time by the UK and Republic of Ireland’s authorities.
They claim to have invested a massive amount of cash in order to be able to store and sell the crypto securely.
More digital asset auctions are expected
The company also plans to organize more online digital assets auctions throughout 2019.
They have signed an agreement with Belgium’s authorities to sell off coins which are seized in various operations against illegal businesses in the country.
It’s also interesting to note that Wilsons Auctions didn’t reveal for the general public what is the type of storage that they are using: cold or hot one.
Cold storage involves keeping the digital assets in a USB, or similar non-connected to the Internet device and hot storage involves placing the tokens on Internet-connected devices.
There are a few regulators who have already banned the use of hot storage because obviously, this type of storage is the easiest target for hackers.
Cryptoinvest mentioned that as of 14:40 UTC on Monday, the online auction has not affected in a significant way the market performance of Monero and XMR was up by 3.74 on a daily basis.
Binance was the largest XMR market and the pairs with Bitcoin and Ethereum managed to record $4.7 million.
In 2018, Japan banned anonymous coins
Back in 2018, Japan’s regulator has banned anonymous coins including Monero, motivating their decision with the fact that these coins are used for money laundering and other criminal activities.
Some voices in the crypto space suggest on the other hand that XMR is what Satoshi initially wanted to create.