Mt. Gox transferred billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin, partly to centralized exchanges, suggesting that more creditors may be repaid as the 10-year saga approaches a conclusion.
The wallet associated with the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange transferred more than $2.19 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to three new wallets on Nov. 4.
Part of the funds were moved to centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEXs) OKX and B2C2, according to onchain data by Spot on Chainn shared in a Nov. 5 X post:
“Over the last 4 days, Mt. Gox has transferred out a total of 32,871 $BTC ($2.22B). Among these tokens, 296 $BTC ($20.13M) was moved to #B2C2 and #OKX. Currently, there remain 12,006 $BTC ($810M) in #MtGox known wallets.
Mt. Gox wallet, transactions. Source: Spot On Chain
More than $9.4 billion worth of Bitcoin was owed to about 127,000 Mt. Gox creditors who have been waiting longer than 10 years to recover their funds, threatening significant sell pressure that could tank Bitcoin’s price.
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Will Mt. Gox add to Bitcoin selling pressure?
The wallets associated with Mt. Gox hold another $825 million worth of Bitcoin at the time of publication, according to Spot on Chain data.
Mt. Gox wallets. Source: Spot On Chain
In the 10 years since Mt. Gox’s collapse, the Bitcoin price appreciated over 8,500% in value — bolstering investor concerns that Mt. Gox’s defunct creditors would be selling their BTC into the market.
However, Mt. Gox creditors have mostly held onto their BTC.
On July 30, Mt. Gox completed 41.5% of its Bitcoin distribution to creditors, who received a total of 59,000 Bitcoin.
Despite receiving nearly $4 billion worth of Bitcoin, the Mt. Gox creditors weren’t selling, according to a July 29 Glassnode report, which said:
“Creditors opted to receive BTC, rather than fiat, which was new in Japanese bankruptcy law […] As such, it is relatively likely that only a subset of these distributed coins will be truly sold onto the market.”
BTC: Mt. Gox trustee outflows. Source: Glassnode
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Mt. Gox was a prominent Bitcoin exchange based in Japan that collapsed in 2014 following a hack.
The exchange was founded in 2010 and processed more than 70% of all Bitcoin transactions at its peak. Mt. Gox lost 850,000 BTC in its security breach, making it one of the biggest hacks ever.
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