BITCOIN fell as traders monitored transfers by wallets belonging to the failed Mt Gox exchange, whose administrators have been stepping up efforts to return a US$9 billion hoard of the largest digital asset to creditors.
The original cryptocurrency dropped as much as 2.7 per cent and was trading at about US$67,840 as of 12.15 pm on Tuesday (May 28) in Singapore. The weakness spread to smaller coins, including second-ranked Ether.
Some 42,829 Bitcoins worth around US$2.9 billion was moved out of Mt Gox wallets in early Asian hours on Tuesday, according to data from CryptoQuant and Arkham Intelligence. The wallets still hold 95,061 Bitcoin after the outflow.
Once the world’s biggest Bitcoin exchange, Tokyo-based Mt Gox was hacked in 2011 and went bankrupt in 2014. Last year, US prosecutors accused two Russian nationals of conspiring with others to break into the exchange’s servers.
Mt Gox’s trustee has said creditors should see base, intermediate and early lump-sum payments by Oct 31 as the winding-up process progresses. One key question is whether those who receive the tokens will sell, pressuring Bitcoin.
Tuesday’s movements in Mt Gox wallets are the first since May 2018, and the fallen platform earlier held about 137,892 Bitcoin, CryptoQuant data shows.
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Prior documents indicated Mt Gox also had Bitcoin Cash and fiat money. Some of the fiat money has already been returned. Bitcoin Cash shed as much as 5 per cent on Tuesday.
Bitcoin recovered from a deep 2022 bear market by quadrupling since the start of last year, helped by the launch of spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in January. The token reached a record US$73,798 in mid-March. BLOOMBERG
