Kraken Distributes Bitcoin From Mt. Gox to Creditors

Some Mt. Gox creditors received a distribution of BTC and BCH for the first time in ten years.

Crypto exchange Kraken said it has “successfully distributed” Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash from the Mt. Gox estate back to creditors.

“It’s been nearly a decade since Kraken was selected by the Trustee to facilitate the investigation and return of client funds. It was our privilege and it was our duty,” said Kraken CEO Dave Ripley made the announcement in a Tuesday post on X.

Among the recipients was Coinbase’s Product Director Scott Shapiro, who shared a picture of a 0.19 BTC transfer and 0.19 BCH transfer that he received at around 5:30 pm ET.

Despite the creditor repayments now being made official, the price of bitcoin has been holding steady. At the time of writing, the leading digital asset was trading at around $66,374, relatively unchanged over the last 24 hours.

Crypto Quant CEO Ki Young Ju noted that there was no significant spike in hourly spot trading volume or BTC outflows from Kraken four hours after news of the distributions.

“We need to wait for the Asian time zone, but it’s a positive sign so far,” he said.

Sure enough, there was an increase in exchange outflows during Asian trading hours, but Crypto Quant analyst Axel Adler pointed out that it was still not a case of market wide panic.  

Onchain analytics firm Arkham noted that a wallet address tied to the Mt. Gox estate had moved a total of $2.85 billion worth of BTC to new wallets, supposedly for the purpose of preparing the funds to be transferred to Bitstamp.

Like Kraken, Bitsamp one of exchanges tasked with returning funds to Mt. Gox creditors. Arkham data shows that four Bitstamp addresses received a total of $340.1 million BTC earlier in the day, while Mt. Gox still holds around $5.7 billion worth of BTC to be distributed.