Mt Gox Trustee and Mark Karpeles weigh in on the estate moving $9.8 billion of bitcoin

Earlier today, $9.8 billion of bitcoin from multiple wallets associated with Mt Gox was consolidated into a single wallet without prior warning from the Mt Gox Trustee, causing some alarm among creditors.

The Trustee has now issued a statement , although it largely clarifies the known process.

"Under the Rehabilitation Plan, the Rehabilitation Trustee is preparing to make repayment for the portion of cryptocurrency rehabilitation claims to which cryptocurrency is allocated," the Trustee said. He clarified that the bitcoin and bitcoin cash will be distributed to creditors either as cryptocurrency or sold for fiat money (dependent on the creditor's choices).

The Trustee said that the exchange has not yet sold any of the bitcoin or bitcoin cash for creditors who have asked for payment to be made in fiat currency instead.

"The Rehabilitation Trustee is currently managing bitcoin and bitcoin cash in a secure manner. As the Rehabilitation Trustee is proceeding with the preparation for the above repayments, please wait for a while until the repayments are made," he said.

Earlier today, $9.8 billion of bitcoin was moved to a single wallet, before around $400 million worth of bitcoin was moved out to a few new addresses, according to Arkham data . The wallet now contains around $9.4 billion of bitcoin, which represents roughly half of Mt Gox's entire stash, Arkham noted.

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Mark Karpeles says 'everything is fine'

Former Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles also weighed in to reassure creditors that today’s movement of bitcoin from Mt Gox wallets — for the first time in five years — was part of the distribution process.

"As far as I know everything is fine with MtGox," said Karpeles on X . "The trustee is moving coins to a different wallet in preparation of the distribution that will likely happen this year, there is no imminent sale of bitcoins happening."

In September 2023, the trustee of Mt. Gox announced that the repayment deadline was pushed back by 12 months to October 31, 2024. That means all payments are currently set to be distributed by that date. However, the deadline has been repeatedly moved back over the last few years, so it is not necessarily set in stone.

The bankruptcy process is paying out creditors in a mix of fiat currency, bitcoin, and bitcoin cash. The fiat currency payments have already started. However, no bitcoin or bitcoin cash payments have yet been made to creditors.