Mt. Gox moved about $10 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to a new wallet on May 28, as a way to repay the company's creditors after it filed for bankruptcy 10 years ago in April 2014. The cryptocurrency market is expected to see sell-off events and large inflows in the coming days.
Notably, activity at Mt. Gox began at 1:42 a.m. UTC, Whale Alert account (Whale Alert) was launched on X. The first transaction sent 3,999 BTC from three known Mt. Gox addresses to a new Bitcoin wallet named “1JbezDVd9VsK9o1Ga9UqLydeuEvhKLAPs6.”
As developments continued, the initial transaction was followed by six more transactions of larger amounts from dozens of addresses labeled Mt. Gox. In total, the new wallet received 141,658 BTC, the equivalent of $9.65 billion, which it has already begun redistributing.
Mt Gox Payments
At the time of writing, recently opened accounts associated with Mt. Gox have begun making small payments as can be seen on-chain, with three transactions worth $169.06 million, $1.5 million, and $273.18 million having been made so far.
In September 2023, Mt. Gox's trustee announced a new deadline for payment to creditors of October 31, 2024. It is therefore likely that the first three transactions are part of these repayments or are intended to cover other expenses.
Bitcoin (BTC) Price Analysis as Mt. Gox Moves Funds
Interestingly, Finnbold Santimento, On-chain activity and Bitcoin price intersect: BTC rebounded from psychological resistance at $70,500 hours before the first trade on Mt. Gox.
This retracement may have been caused by insider trading in anticipation of further activity.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $68,000, recovering slightly from a low of $67,500, and the new Mt. Gox wallet holds 141,680 BTC, valued at $9.648 billion.
Essentially, this represents one-third of Bitcoin's 24-hour trading volume of $30.77 billion, proving its relevance to the leading cryptocurrency. Selling pressure could trigger a significant price drop, which speculators are already pricing in.
What happened at Mt Gox in 2014?
Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox was founded in 2010 by Jed McCaleb and Mark Karpeles. Notably, Jed McCaleb is the co-founder and former CTO of Ripple (XRP) and Stellar (XLM).
Mt. Gox has quickly become the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, handling over 70% of all Bitcoin transactions, and was also one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges to have a significant early presence.
But in February 2014, Mt. Gox halted trading and filed for bankruptcy after the company revealed it had lost approximately 850,000 bitcoins (valued at $450 million at the time) in a hack and theft that shook the cryptocurrency world and raised concerns about the safety of digital assets.
The collapse of Mt. Gox had a major impact on the perception and regulation of cryptocurrencies. Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles was later arrested and charged with embezzlement and data manipulation.
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