Mt.Gox Transfers $9 Billion Bitcoin to Single Address as Part of Repayment Plans

• More than 140,000 BTC, worth around $9 billion, were transferred from Mt. Gox wallets to an unknown address in thirteen transactions, possibly as part of a plan to repay creditors by October 31, 2024.

• The market reacted poorly to these moves, with Bitcoin falling 1.4% to $67,680 after reaching a high of over $70,000 on Monday.

Wallets belonging to the defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox transferred more than 140,000 bitcoin (BTC), valued at around $9 billion, to an unknown address in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Gox, once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, closed in 2014 after it was revealed it had lost hundreds of thousands of bitcoins in a hack. Since then, creditors have been awaiting repayment of their assets – one that is widely considered to add selling pressure to BTC markets.

In a press release, rehabilitation trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi said that no sales of bitcoin or bitcoin cash (BCH) had occurred and that the group was “managing bitcoin and bitcoin cash in a secure manner.”

Portfolio activity shows that the movements were made in thirteen transactions. A likely test transaction worth $3 was made on May 20, and another smaller transaction of $160 was made on Tuesday. The remaining transactions ranged from $1.2 million to $2.2 billion in bitcoin.

All Mt.Gox bitcoins were effectively transferred to a single bitcoin wallet, bitinfocharts data show.

This is the first movement of assets from Mt. Gox’s cold wallets in more than five years and is likely part of a plan to distribute assets back to creditors before October 31, 2024.

All coins were transferred to a new address “1JbezDVd9VsK9o1Ga9UqLydeuEvhKLAPs6,” CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno said in an X post.

Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy, said in an X post that he expected most of the transferred bitcoin to be held by lenders rather than being sold on the open market.

Still, market participants appeared pessimistic about the moves, with bitcoin falling 1.4% since the start of Asian trading. It fell to $67,680 after Monday’s high of more than $70,000.

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