What do Barry Silbert, CEO of SecondMarket, and Luther Lowe, director of public policy for Yelp, have in common? Both expressed interest in buying some government-confiscated bitcoins, and neither expected that that fact would be advertised by an unfortunate bcc fail.

Silbert's and Lowe's names were included on a list of interested bidders that leaked when the US Marshals sent out an email about the auction that failed to bcc the recipients. One of the recipients showed the email to CoinDesk, a blog that covers the virtual currency world.

In addition to Silbert and Lowe, the list includes:

Daniel Folkinshteyn, assistant professor at Rowan University

Malcolm Oluwasanmi, chairperson of Little Phoenix Investment Group

Fabrice Evangelista, quantitative arbitrage at BNP Paribas

Michal Handerhanm, co-founder and COO of Bitcoin Shop

Dave Goel, managing general partner of Matrix Capital Management

Dinuka Samarasinghe, investment professional

Chris DeMuth Jr., Rangeley Capital

Fred Ehrsam, co-founder, Coinbase

Jonathan Disner, corporate counsel at DRW Trading Group

William Brindise, head investment manager at DigitalBTC

Michael Moro, director at SecondMarket

Jennifer R. Jacoby, lawyer at WilmerHale

Sam Lee, co-founder, Bitcoins Reserve

Shem Booth-Spain, artist and musician

Avarus Corporation

The FBI came into a fortune in bitcoin when it seized the coffers of Silk Road, the digital black market that trafficked in drugs and other illicit goods, and arrested its alleged owner. The FBI transferred 141,341 bitcoins to the US Marshals service, which is now attempting to auction the nearly 30,000 of them that were found on Silk Road's servers, worth around $18 million at current prices (the rest were in personal accounts belonging to Ross Ulbricht, who is accused of running the site).

The auction is scheduled for June 27, but bidders were required to deposit $200,000 with the US Marshals and register in advance (the latter requirement may have already scared off many interested bitcoiners, who tend to value their privacy). It's unclear who on the leaked list actually actually plans to bid on the coins.

The US agency confirmed the mistake to CoinDesk. "One of the emails that we sent out this morning inadvertently showed a list of some of the individuals who have asked a question or questions about the pending bitcoin auction," a representative wrote. "We apologize for the error."