The defunct Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange has started moving the assets in preparation for reimbursements to customers and markets are already reacting.
On July 16, Mt. Gox began transferring BTC as it prepares to pay back customers who lost assets in the devastating exchange hack a decade ago.
According to Arkham Intelligence, a Mt. Gox-linked wallet moved 0.021 BTC to another address. Industry observer Colin Wu suggested that this could be a transfer test.
However, around an hour later, there was a much larger transfer of 44,000 BTC worth around $2.8 billion to a Mt. Gox Cold Wallet address.
The Mt. Gox wallet still holds a whopping 139,000 BTC worth around $8.8 billion at current market prices.
Crypto markets have only just recovered from the selling pressure induced by the German government dumping its BTC stash; now they have to contend with a larger whale.
In late June, the Mt. Gox rehabilitation trustee issued a letter regarding repayments to creditors, stating that they would commence in July. At the time, BTC tanked 4.6% on the news.
The exchange, one of the world’s first BTC marketplaces, became insolvent after a devastating hack that led to the theft of 850,000 BTC valued at around $460 million at the time of the incident in 2014.
The potential sale of billions of dollars of BTC from Mt. Gox customers is likely to put further pressure on markets, which have been back in the green over the past few days.
Market Reaction
Bitcoin prices had already started to retreat in response to the massive asset movement. The asset tapped an intraday and almost four-week high of $65,000 during Asian trading on Tuesday.
However, it has retreated sharply over the past couple of hours dumping 3% in a fall below $63,000. At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $62,957, which is still up 10% from the same time last week.
Analyst ‘Rekt Capital’ declared that the Bitcoin downtrend was over on July 15, however, that statement may have been premature in light of this latest development and there may be a little more pain ahead.