Mt. Gox Moves $35 Million in Bitcoin to Cold Storage After Postponing Repayments

Mt. Gox is moving its Bitcoin again. 

Late Thursday, the collapsed exchange moved 500 Bitcoin—worth over $35 million—to cold storage, according to data and wallet labels from blockchain tracker Arkham Intelligence. 

It isn’t clear why the Bitcoin was moved, and Mt. Gox didn’t immediately respond to Decrypt’s questions.

But the exchange is in the long-delayed process of giving back crypto to former clients who lost investments when the Japanese company discovered in 2014 that it had been hacked for a substantial sum of Bitcoin. 

Top crypto exchanges Kraken, Bitstamp, Bitbank, SBI VC Trade, and BitGo are in charge of distributing the coins to former Mt. Gox clients. Some of the repayments have already taken place, but that doesn’t mean that the process will be completed anytime soon.

Earlier this month, the exchange announced it would extend the deadline to make repayments until October 2025, giving itself another full year to hand back assets to traders who have been waiting a decade to be made whole again.

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Previously, when Mt. Gox has moved its Bitcoin, the transfers have spooked industry observers and traders expecting a potential selloff ahead. The price of Bitcoin is currently trading for $69,408 per coin after having dropped by nearly 2% in 24 hours—but the price had been flat earlier, following the transfer. 

Mt. Gox was a Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange for the cryptocurrency’s early investors. But hackers targeted it and gradually took 850,000 Bitcoins, forcing the exchange to file for bankruptcy in 2014 and shut down after it uncovered the attack.

Law enforcement clawed back 140,000 Bitcoins from the theft years later, and former customers are now getting back their funds under a rehabilitation proposal approved in 2021.

Edited by Andrew Hayward