Bitcoin briefly hit the skids Tuesday morning as the Mt. Gox trustee moved more than $2.8 billion worth of BTC into two different wallets, according to data collected by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence. One of the wallets received $340 million and the other $2.5 billion worth of Bitcoin during Asia trading hours.
“Mt. Gox moved a total of $2.85B BTC to new wallets this morning in order to distribute 5110 BTC ($340.1M) BTC to 4 separate Bitstamp addresses,” Arkham wrote on Twitter.
It was just a week ago that Kraken confirmed that it had received funds from the Mt. Gox trustee and would be distributing them to creditors before the end of July. Bitstamp, another of the five exchanges tasked with transferring BTC and Bitcoin Cash to creditors, has said it will begin its distributions “as soon as possible” and not take the full 60 days it was allotted.
At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price has climbed back above $67,000—just 0.2% lower than it was this time yesterday—after taking a brief dive to $66,267.87 around the same time as the Mt. Gox transfers. All told, the world’s oldest and largest cryptocurrency has gained 7% in the past week and has seen more than of $38 billion worth of trading volume in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.
The BTC transfers are coming after the market endured three weeks of the German government liquidating $2.8 billion worth of seized Bitcoin, the U.S. government moving millions worth of its seized BTC on Monday night, and a sudden shakeup in the U.S. presidential election.
But Bitcoin traders seem undeterred. Analysts at crypto exchange Bitfinex noted yesterday that a decrease in the Bitcoin Exchange Reserve metric, which tracks how much BTC is currently sitting in exchange wallets, has been rapidly decreasing. This, they argued, suggests large investors have been buying the dip and moving their funds to cold storage wallets.
But that doesn’t mean the markets are in for smooth sailing, they added.
“Further, given the uncertainty brought upon by an unclear Democrat candidate, we can expect a news driven and volatility filled week with elections, Ethereum ETF launch and Mt. Gox creditors receiving coins being some of the main talking points,” the analysts wrote.
Rise and fall of Mt. Gox
Mt. Gox was once the largest Bitcoin exchange, handling around 70% of global Bitcoin transactions. Founded in 2010—originally as an exchange for physical Magic: The Gathering cards—it became a major player in the cryptocurrency world once it started accepting Bitcoin.
However, in 2014, Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy after revealing it had lost approximately 850,000 Bitcoins, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, due to a security breach. The company’s downfall was attributed to poor management, inadequate security measures, and a lack of transparency.
Now, 10 years after the Bitcoin went missing, creditors will finally be paid back.
