If you fill out a LIR application for ARIN or RIPE you're probably going to get repurposed AFRINIC or APNIC IPv4 IPs (anywhere from 20 /25's to a /22 to a /16 ). Globally Ipv4 is pretty much exhausted (no large blocks) but some regions have more and there's a black/grey market for IPs that all the large hosts are part of.
On what, the IP blackmarket? I don't think so, but off the top of my head Microsoft (rather publicly) bought an entire /13 for several million a few years ago
I think you're right. I set up a VPS last year with a provider based in Buffalo, NY, but for a few weeks, geolocators kept placing my IP in Indonesia. But there doesn't really seem to be anything untoward about moving IPs from areas of low demand to areas of high demand.
