Mt. Gox Trustee Liquidates Massive Amount of BTC and BCH

The trustee of the ill-fated cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox has sold 35,841 BTC for USD 362 million (JPY 38,231,389,537) and 34,008 BCH for USD 45 million (JPY 4,756,654,806), revealed a recent report published by Nobuaki Kobayashi, the trustee of the bankrupt exchange, targeted at creditors.

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The balance in the report shows that the trustee has secured JPY 44,170,278,921 as of March 6th, 2018, a sum approximately JPY 42,956,000,000 more than the balance shown in the ninth creditors’ meeting.

According to former CEO of Mt. Gox Mark Karpeles commenting on Reddit, the sums were “sold between December 2017 and February 2018 with the assistance of a bitcoin exchange”.

Though the report mentioned the sale of the funds, the trustee did not explain the exact reason for this sale. Mentioning the reason of the sale, a rough translation of the report noted: “As a result of the consultation with the court, I considered it necessary and reasonable to sell a certain amount of BTC and BCC at this point and secure a certain amount of money for distribution of resources, and thus, I sold the amount of BTC and BCC above.”

“I plan to consult with the court and determine further sale of BTC and BCC,” the report added.

Though the report did not mention any details of the exchange involved in the liquidation, it is likely to be Kraken, which is the exchange decided upon for the fund distribution.

Mentioning the liquidation value, Mark Karpeles pointed out that there is “nothing curious” about it.

On 28th February, a report made in response to the court order dismissing the creditors’ petition for the civil rehabilitation of the bankrupt exchange stated: “I concluded that there is no ground set forth in Paragraph 2 through 4 of Article 25 of the Civil Rehabilitation Act with respect to the Bankrupt Entity, MtGox Co., Ltd.”

“However, this conclusion is based on the premises that measures are taken to secure the interests that are expected to have already been obtained, in light of the size of the bankruptcy estate that has been established in the bankruptcy proceedings, by all creditors who filed proofs of claims for the pending bankruptcy case against the Bankrupt Entity, especially creditors whose bankruptcy claims are monetary claims, before the order of commencement of civil rehabilitation proceedings is made, i.e., before the stay of the bankruptcy proceedings,” it added.

The trustee still holds 165,000 bitcoins, worth USD 1.5 billion, along with a similar amount of Bitcoin Cash, worth USD 150 million, but there the actions to be taken for distribution are not clear.

The report added: “The matters such as the possibility of carrying out a distribution and the timing and method thereof have not yet been determined.”

It’s been four years since Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy, and considering the pace at which the proceedings are going, the distribution process might take another decade to complete.