Mt. Gox, the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, is set to pay its creditors 142,000 bitcoins by October this year. In a surprising move, Mt. Gox’s cold wallet address transferred all its 140,000 bitcoins to an unknown address earlier today, indicating that the repayment process may have begun. At the same time, the price of bitcoin has experienced significant volatility.
(List of Contents:
Mt. Gox transfers all 140,000 bitcoins from its cold wallet
Bitcoin drops below $67,500
Could this cause a bitcoin sell-off?)
Mt. Gox, which suffered a loss of 850,000 bitcoins due to hacking in 2014, is now accelerating its repayment process after 10 years. It is expected to pay a total of 142,000 bitcoins, 143,000 BCH, and 69 billion Japanese yen to its creditors by October this year.
Starting this month, Reddit users have been revealing screenshots of MtGox’s Kraken BTC and BCH payment API interface showing “payment in progress,” with the update date being May 13. This indicates that Kraken is preparing for the payment, and creditors may soon receive their bitcoin and BCH repayments.
Furthermore, earlier today, Arkham Intelligence, a monitoring firm, discovered that Mt. Gox’s cold wallet transferred all 141,686 bitcoins through multiple transactions to an unknown wallet address, 1JbezDVd9VsK9o1Ga9UqLydeuEvhKLAPs6, with an approximate value of $9.61 billion.
Before receiving this significant amount of bitcoin today, the 1Jbez… wallet had previously received small amounts of bitcoin from two addresses on May 20 and 28. The source of funds for these two addresses can be traced back to a CoinJoin mixing address.
Although there haven’t been any further transfers from the 1Jbez… wallet at the moment, bitcoin experienced a significant drop at around the same time, reaching a low of $67,485 before the deadline, with a decrease of over 4% in the past 12 hours.
Over the past 10 years, the price of bitcoin has increased by over 10 times. Market concerns arise as the total of over 140,000 bitcoins is returned to investors, potentially causing a short-term sell-off and bringing about volatility in the bitcoin market.
In a report last month, cryptocurrency firm K33 Research stated that the repayment of 142,000 bitcoins and 143,000 BCH by Mt. Gox “may become a significant factor affecting the price decline” in the coming weeks.
K33 Research pointed out that while it is unlikely for creditors to collectively sell their received funds, this expectation may lead market participants to exercise caution and avoid taking risks before the event occurs.
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