Matt Gox moves $9.6B worth of Bitcoin. Will creditors finally get paid?
Crowded cryptocurrency exchange Met Gox moved $9.62 billion worth of bitcoins into a new wallet, raising hopes among lenders.
141,686 Bitcoins (BTC) were merged into the “1Jbez” wallet from several other cold wallets associated with Mount Gox.
These transfers are considered an indication that users who have been unable to access their funds since 2014, when Matt Gox stopped trading and discontinued, may be paid.
The transfers represent the first off-chain activity from the exchange in more than five years and appear to be in line with MiGox's plan to repay creditors by the end of October 2024.
Bitcoin's consolidation near $10 billion points to Matt Gox's plans to pay back his users, according to Andy Lean, blockchain expert and author of NFT: From Zero to Hero. Leanne told Cointelegraph:
“This is the first asset movement from Matt Gox's cold wallets in over five years and may be part of a plan to distribute assets to creditors before the promised deadline of October 31, 2024, in my humble opinion.”
However, it could face further delays as the current deadline is set for September 2023 – a month before Gox was originally scheduled to pay off the exchange's creditors by October 31, 2023.
Bitcoin worth more than $9.4 billion in 2018. Gox owes more than 127,000 creditors, some of whom have been waiting for more than 10 years since the exchange collapsed in 2014 after a series of unexpected data breaches.
MT Gox was once one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges to facilitate more than 70% of all trades made in the blockchain ecosystem.
In the year The site went down in 2014 following a major hack in 2011. The failure affected about 24,000 lenders and resulted in the loss of 850,000 BTC.
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Markets at Mt. Gox are charging a fee.
The first Mt. Gox transfers, bitcoin prices fell 2% on May 28, hitting a daily low below $67,500, before recovering above $68,000, according to CoinMarketCap.
The BTC dip could be a sign of a possible market cap for Gox, Lien said.
“The market reacted a bit bearishly to these moves, as the price of Bitcoin fell 2.1% to $67,505 after the move. This may be because lenders are under pressure to sell after they get paid.
Despite the small increase in price, Lien said the ability to pay would solve one of the crypto industry's most pressing issues.
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