Bitcoin (BTC) Drops as Mt. Gox Moves $9.3B Worth of Assets

Defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox has transferred 137,664 BTC (worth over $9.3 billion) from its cold wallets into one Bitcoin wallet. This asset movement has triggered a price drop for BTC as the crypto community speculates that intense selling pressure is around the corner.

Tokyo-based Mt. Gox was once the largest Bitcoin exchange globally. However, the company collapsed in 2014 after hackers breached the system and stole 850,000 bitcoins (valued at around $460 million at that time) from Mt. Gox customers. Since then, the exchange has filed for bankruptcy protection, and creditors have yet to be reimbursed.

Steps Towards Reimbursing Creditors

After more than five years of inactivity, Mt. Gox’s cold wallets were seen transporting large tranches of BTC to an unidentified address. On-chain data shows that after an initial $4 deposit on May 20th, the latter transactions occurred within a few hours.

After a short-term panic among Bitcoiners, Mt. Gox’s trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi informed the public that the BTC movement was a step towards redistributing the assets to creditors on or before October’s end. Users can decide to receive their repayment as cryptocurrencies or as fiat currencies.

Mark Karpelès, the former CEO of Mt. Gox, tweeted earlier today that “everything is fine” with the exchange.

“As far as I know everything is fine with MtGox. The trustee is moving coins to a different wallet in preparation of the distribution that will likely happen this year, there is no imminent sale of bitcoins happening,” he wrote.

Despite Mt. Gox’s claim to make the repayment a seamless process, there remain concerns among crypto community members regarding the selling pressure that may follow. Recall that market researchers from the brokerage firm K33 stated earlier this month that the defunct exchange’s reimbursement plan would trigger a “bearish overhang in the market.”

BTC Drops Below $68K

Yesterday, BTC traded above $70,600. However, following Mt. Gox’s assets movement, the coin tanked to as low as $67,500, representing a 4.3% drop. The chart below shows that BTC has reclaimed a trading price of $68,200 at the time of writing.

Source: CoinGecko