By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 25th, 2024
Speculations are that Mt. Gox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi is selling more BTC tokens in order to compensate its creditors.
Although the Mt. Gox exchange went completely bankrupt and defunct four years back in February 2014, it still continues to impact the price movements in the crypto markets as the Mt. Gox trustee and Tokyo-based lawyer Nobuaki Kobayashi, has been found liquidating funds for the Mt. Gox for its creditors.
On Thursday, April 26, reports of nearly 16,000 bitcoins worth around $150 million that were tied to the Mt. Gox exchange have been moved. According to the CryptoGround, which monitors the Mt. Gox’s wallets, the coins came from four separate addresses were being consolidated into a single address with 0 BTC remaining in each wallet.
The Mt. Gox wallets are currently under the control of Tokyo-based lawyer and Mt. Gox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi. Last month, he disclosed that he sold $400 million worth BTC and BCH tokens back in September 2017. Currently, Mt. Gox holds more than 140,000 BTC tokens, according to the blockchain data. Additional information shows that apart from BTC, the trustee is most likely also moving BCH tokens as the same number of BCH tokens were also found to be on the move. These coins were reportedly worth $21 million as per the current exchange rate.
These transactions have raised the speculation that Kobayashi is now preparing for the second round of sales in order to compensate the creditors of the bankrupt exchange. After Kobayashi admitted last month to have sold $400 million worth BTC tokens, he was heavily criticized by the BTC community for selling the tokens on order-book cryptocurrency exchanges instead of over-the-counter (OTC) channels used by institutional traders, as big exchange orders can lead to rapid price fluctuations creating ripples in the global markets.
Many now speculate that the sharp-dip in the BTC price on Wednesday was probably due to Kobayashi selling tokens to another OTC buyer below the market rate. Although the other buyer would have received his/her tokens on Thursday, they would have probably sold their holdings on Wednesday at the market rate, which led to pushing the price lower and further profiting from arbitrage.
The process of liquidating the tokens for the Mt. Gox has been under a lot of controversies since long, especially given the fact that the amount held by Mt. Gox exceeds largely what has been claimed by the creditors. The Mt. Gox credits have been advocating to move the company out of bankruptcy into civil rehabilitation so that they can sell their BTC holdings at the current market rate. Currently, the creditors stand to be compensated at $480 per BTC tokens which was the price of Bitcoin when the exchange went defunct around February 2014.
The remaining funds, which are supposedly worth billions of dollars, would be going to the former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles. However, Karpeles said that he doesn’t want the remaining BTC holdings that are left after the creditors have been paid, and has expressed his wish to move the exchange in civil rehabilitation.