45 dollars, not 45 BTC.

Unless they changed the address, they've only received a total of 0.08003067 BTC at the time of this comment.

https://blockchain.info/address/19BY2XCgbDe6WtTVbTyzM9eR3LYr...

Good. People who know cryptography should also know enough about game theory to not participate in a dollar auction.

I mean, even with a perfectly honest auctioneer, dollar auctions (where one person wins but more than one person pays) are one of those games where the only way to win is not to play. Now add to that the fact that there's no reason to trust the auctioneer.

People who know cryptography would not be participating. However I think this is deliberately made to look stupid (complete with over-the-top Russian sounding phraseology to imply these are those famous ex-KGB hackers) to attract irrational but wealthy entities -- probably governments and their spy agencies. They have large sums of money to play with.

I can see perhaps Iran in a desperate attempt to exact revenge for their centrifuge plant being hacked, throwing few hundred thousands at them, just on small chance this would yield something.

They're up to 1.7BTC now. Clearly no big player is bidding.