Mt. Gox was always considered to be one of the most notorious cryptocurrency exchange desks, especially after the 2014 incident when it went down with 850000 bitcoins belonging to their users. And now, it seems the company has moved another huge batch of its remaining funds to consolidated wallets.
As per recent data collected by the Mt. Gox cold wallet monitor, 16000 BTC and 16000 BCH have just been transferred to two separate addresses, by the non-functioning exchange desk. The following images showcase where the BTCs and the BCHs have been transferred.
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It was truly unexpected to find Mt. Gox moves such huge chunks of cryptocurrencies especially since no coins were moved from the exchange desk since February. However, in the time span from December 2017 to February, they have been uploading Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash to their platform - which accounts for approximately half a million in value.
Now if we are to take historical data into consideration, Mt. Gox has shown this tendency to sell off huge chunks of cryptocurrencies following the upload of some of its reserves. These stunts affect the crypto market by registering a severe drop in price and makes the market extremely volatile for the following few days.
Ivo Jonkers, a well-known crypto-trader and speaker, talked to Hard Fork, involving this incident, “It appears that the Mt. Gox trustees have moved the funds to a wallet belonging to an exchange desk. […] The last time this happened, Mt. Gox proceeded to sell the funds at market rate, practically sending the entire market in the red. I won’t be surprised if this happens again.”
As of now, there is no intel as to whether these intels actually belongs to an exchange desk or not. Also, Mt. Gox’s motives on what they plan to do with the fund are also not known. Will they pull off another stunt making the crypto-market even more volatile? We’ll just have to wait and find out.