3 ms·

i dont understand why the highest bid in the shadow brokers auction is less than a thousand dollars

• bdcravens 10y ago
  Highest bid? More like all the bids, combined.
• wongarsu 10y ago
  To me it wasn't clear in the auction description if it's possible to increase a previous bid. - If it's not possible, then the only strategy is to bid as late as possible: Suppose Group A bids $1000, Group B bids $1001. To win the auction Group A would have to transfer another $1002, making a total investement of $2003. Group C on the other hand only has to commit a total investement of $1002 to win at this point. Since the duration of the auction isn't known you would wait for everyone else to make a bid first, since the person to bid last is in the advantage. If everyone does that, this becomes the ultimate waiting game. - If on the other hand it is possible to increase one's bid by just transfering the difference, then this is a tullock auction[1]: a classical example from game theory where the only rational strategy is not to bid at all (unless you are completely sure that nobody else will bid. As soon as you have two bidders, both behaving rationally would lead to both committing an infinite amount of money, one of them losing it all). So just from a game theory standpoint nobody would actually bid in this auction. Add to this the very likely possibility that the public leak contains all data they have and that this auction is a scam, and this isn't attractive at all. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction (Dollar auctions are a two-player example of Tullock auctions)