datum
Request a briefing
datum
Request a briefing
SEALED-BID BATCH AUCTIONS FOR DIGITAL ASSETS
Large digital-asset sales leak. Wallets are watched and transfers are reported as they happen — the market prices the disposal before the first bid is placed. Datum gives auction houses a sealed-bid mechanism with escrowed settlement that keeps the sale confidential until it clears.
01 — THE PROBLEM
Move it to an exchange.
Every transfer is public. When Saxony sold 49,858 BTC in 2024, on-chain trackers reported each tranche to exchanges and market makers as it moved — a €2.6 billion sale, visible to the entire market while it was still underway.
Split it into small lots.
When seized coins have gone to public auction, houses sold them in small retail lots. Retail absorbs those; it does not absorb institutional size, and weeks of small sales means weeks of price risk.
Negotiate privately.
Fast and quiet, but the price answers to nothing. The agency is asked to take it on faith that the discount was fair.
Major government crypto seizures & disposals
Approximate value at the time, $ billions
Saxony was not an outlier — it was the case that happened to reach the market first. Source: DOJ, IRS-CI, Saxony State Prosecutor, UK courts, EO 14233.
| Event | Amount | Value then |
|---|---|---|
| USMS Silk Road auctions (2014–15) | ~30,000 BTC | ~$0.02B |
| US Silk Road seizure (2020) | 69,370 BTC | ~$1.0B |
| IRS-CI Zhong recovery (2021) | 50,676 BTC | $3.4B |
| Saxony sale (2024) | 49,858 BTC | €2.6B |
| UK recovery (2024–25) | ~61,000 BTC | ~£5B |
| US Prince Group seizure (2025) | 127,271 BTC | ~$15B — to reserve, not sold |
Each route gives up confidentiality, size, or price discovery. A sealed-bid auction gives up none.
02 — THE MECHANISM
1 · ESCROW
The lot locks in on-chain escrow at auction open. Datum never holds it.
2 · SUBMISSION
Bidders place funded limit orders during a fixed window. No order book is published. Arrival time confers no advantage.
3 · CLEARING
At close, a single price maximizes matched volume. Every fill executes at that price. Below the seller's confidential reserve, nothing trades and nothing is disclosed.
4 · SETTLEMENT
Delivery versus payment through escrow. The asset releases only against confirmed payment.
WHY ONE PRICE.
A single clearing price reduces the incentive to shade bids and the winner's curse that deters bidders in pay-as-bid formats. It is the mechanism behind equity closing auctions — which set roughly one in ten shares traded on Nasdaq each day — and behind US Treasury auctions, which moved to uniform pricing in 1998 for the same conditions: concentrated size and informed bidders.
03 — DISCLOSURE
| PARTY | BEFORE CLOSE | AFTER CLOSE |
|---|---|---|
| Bidder | Own orders only | Own fills, clearing price |
| Instructing agency | Book depth, order count | Complete book and allocation |
| Auction house | Status, participation | Complete book and allocation |
| Auditor / regulator | — | Full read access on request |
| Everyone else | Nothing | Clearing price and total volume |
Datum runs on Canton, a privacy-enabled blockchain built for regulated finance.
04 — YOUR MANDATE
| THE AUCTION HOUSE HOLDS | DATUM PROVIDES |
|---|---|
| The government mandate and the client | The sealed-bid mechanism |
| Cataloguing, marketing, bidder acquisition | Order handling and clearing |
| Bidder onboarding, KYC, AML | Escrowed delivery-versus-payment settlement |
| Commission and fee structure | Reporting for the instructing agency |
| The brand on the sale | Non-custodial escrow, locked at open |
05 — WHAT COMES NEXT
Tokenized funds are entering institutional portfolios. Rebalancing at size needs scheduled, confidential price formation — the role closing auctions play in equities today. The house that builds its record on seized assets is the house those mandates come to next.
On-chain tokenized real-world assets
Excluding stablecoins, $ billions
Source: rwa.xyz data via CoinDesk (Jun 2025), Chainalysis; 2026 as of July.
| Year | On-chain RWAs |
|---|---|
| 2022 | ≈$5B |
| 2023 | ≈$8B |
| 2024 | ≈$15B |
| 2025 | ≈$24B |
| 2026 (Jul) | ≈$31B |
Where the forecasters say it goes
Tokenized-asset projections, $ trillions
Even the most conservative forecast is ~65× today's market. Source: McKinsey; BCG/Ripple; Standard Chartered.
| Forecast | Value | Horizon |
|---|---|---|
| Today | $0.03T | Jul 2026 |
| McKinsey | $2–4T | 2030 |
| BCG / Ripple | $9.4T | 2030 |
| Standard Chartered | $30T+ | 2034 |
We are looking to run a pilot with a US auction house active in government and law-enforcement disposals, on a single lot. No change to your mandate. No change to how you invoice. The briefing is thirty minutes: the mechanism, the disclosure model, and a pilot outline.