The now-defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox has just witnessed a move of approximately 16,000 BTC this Thursday. There is sparking speculation that the estate’s trustee is preparing to liquidate even more coins.
The transactions are in a combined worth of nearly $141 million. The transaction was first flagged by CryptoGround (a service monitoring Mt. Gox’s Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash wallets). The new blockchain data indicates that the coins were consolidated into a single wallet with 0 BTC remaining in the source addresses.
Looks like 16k BTC from Mt Gox were consolidated to this address
We obviously don't know if they were sold or just moved for some other reasonhttps://t.co/rr05Vn7Fnv pic.twitter.com/eMS1vMCG3l— Alistair Milne (@alistairmilne) April 26, 2018
The 16,000 Bitcoin Cash stored corresponds to the same addresses that was moved. Those coins, on the other hand, are worth around $21 million at the present exchange rate.
These transactions sparked a lot of questions about Nobuaki Kobayashi who is the Tokyo lawyer in charge of Mt. Gox’s estate – and whether he is planning a sell-off of the funds in order to compensate for the bankruptcy by the company’s creditors.
Earlier this year, Kobayashi revealed that he sold more than $400 million in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash in order to cover the JPY liabilities on the exchange. A lot of people criticized this move because it was done on order-book cryptocurrency exchanges rather than over-the-counter channels which are typically used by traders.
According to some, the Wednesday’s sharp market decline is somehow connected to this sell-off to an OTC buyer at a below-market rate. However, it is entirely possible that Kobayashi is consolidating assets too – and there are rumors that he is preparing to sell them or has already done that.
The remaining funds would likely go to the former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles. In a recent Reddit AMA, he said that he doesn’t want them and desires to see the exchange moving into civil rehabilitation.
DC Forecasts is a leader in many crypto news categories, striving for the highest journalistic standards and abiding by a strict set of editorial policies. If you are interested to offer your expertise or contribute to our news website, feel free to contact us at [email protected]
Discussion about this post