Bitstamp, one of five crypto exchanges tapped to help distribute the billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin currently owed to Mt. Gox creditors, said on Monday that it plans to disburse funds to investors as quickly as possible once they are received.
“According to the agreement with the Mt. Gox trustees, Bitstamp has 60 days to distribute the tokens, though we are of course working to make sure those investors are made whole as soon as possible,” the Robinhood-acquired exchange said in a statement shared with Decrypt.
The comment sheds some light on the largely opaque and anxiously followed process by which trustees of the defunct Mt. Gox—once the largest crypto exchange in the world—plan to unload 142,000 recovered BTC on creditors who were left empty-handed when the platform was hacked and shuttered in 2014.
Many crypto holders are fearful that dumping too much of that sum on the market at the same time could crater Bitcoin’s price. Last week, as Mt. Gox geared up the process of transferring its BTC stores—sending $2.7 billion worth of tokens from cold storage to an unidentified wallet—Bitcoin fell by nearly 10%.
Exacerbated by fears of the Mt. Gox BTC refund’s impact on the market, and the German government’s own recent dumping of seized Bitcoin, the world’s top cryptocurrency is down 19% in the last month.
The total value of all the Bitcoin to be distributed by Mt. Gox’s trustees is roughly $8 billion; the German government still holds some $1.5 billion worth of the token, according to Arkham.
Experts expect the unloading of those gargantuan sums on the market will all but certainly push Bitcoin’s price even lower.
"It would need to be a massive July for Bitcoin’s price to resist the sheer weight of supply flooding into the market from Mt. Gox and the German government," Pav Hundal, lead market analyst at crypto exchange Swyftx, previously told Decrypt. "This could be how we get as low as $50,000."
Today’s update from Bitstamp indicates the complex and competing priorities at play in sending so much crypto to users at once: while crypto creditors are likely inclined to want to keep Bitcoin’s price stable, they also will want to regain control over funds owed to them as soon as possible.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.