By
Steve Muchoki
April 22nd, 2024
Kobayashi said that the bankruptcy estate has still $1.8 billion reserves which he will be selling after proper consultation with the court to reimburse the creditors.
Nobuaki Kobayashi, the Tokyo-based lawyer and trustee of the default Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, which filed for bankruptcy back in 2014, has recently disclosed that he has been selling Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash holdings worth a total of $400 million since the past six months starting September 2017.
Kobayashi, who is unloading and liquidating his assets on behalf of the Mt. Gox creditors says his decision to sell was made following a consultation from the court. He also said that he has another $1.8 billion worth holdings to offload. On Wednesday, March 7, Kobayashi published the details of the sale wherein the trustee has sold 35,841.00701 BTC and 34,008.00701 in bitcoin cash. 90% of the total sale amount arrived from selling Bitcoins while the remaining was contributed by Bitcoin Cash.
Kobayashi said: “As a result of the consultation with the court, I considered it necessary and reasonable to sell a certain amount of BTC and BCC at this point and secure a certain amount of money for distribution resources, and thus, I sold the amount of BTC and BCC above. I made efforts to sell BTC and BCC at as high a price as possible in light of the market price of BTC and BCC at the timing of the sale.”
Kobayashi has mentioned that after the 9th creditors meeting on the 27th of September last year, it was “necessary and reasonable” for him to unload the BTC and BCH holdings in order to “secure a certain amount of money for distribution resources.”
Mt. Gox which was once the biggest Bitcoin exchange in the world went bankrupt four years back after it was found that the exchange had lost 8,50,000 Bitcoins which were worth $500 million back then. The exchange completely collapsed after the event which triggered a global regulatory response. CEO Mark Karpeles was charged with data manipulation and embezzlement to which he pleaded to be “not guilty” last year. The company, however, later claimed that it has managed to recover 200,000 Bitcoins and put all the blame of the event on the hackers.
Kobayashi has not mentioned any details about the strategy he adopted to sell the cryptocurrencies but he said that he tried to sell them “as high as possible”. Disclosure of the details shows that Kobayashi has sold the BTC holdings at an average price of $10,105. The existing Bitcoin reserves in the bankruptcy’s estates currently stand at 166,344.35 BTC, worth nearly $1.8 billion.
Kobayashi has said that he looking forward to generating additional cash from the future sales of BTC in order to reimburse 25,000 accepted claims from the creditors. Kobayashi stated: “I plan to consult with the court and determine further sale of BTC and BCC.”
However, the most pertinent question is that four years down the line after the Mt. Gox hack, have we learned enough from the episode? The answer to it seems to be a big NO, as earlier this year in January, another Japanese exchanged was robbed off $530 million in an online hack. The Financial Services Agency, Japan’s financial service watchdog, has been closely observing the matter at hand and has been seen taking some strict regulatory measures for exchanges to operate in the country.