A trustee of defunct Tokyo bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox sold roughly $400 million worth of the digital currency to pay off creditors, according to documents published last week. The remaining liquidation reportedly won’t happen until September, and may not happen at all according to court documents. Many analysts believe this is helping sentiment turn bullish.
Brian Kelly, CEO of BKCM said:
“It’s still hanging over but now we’ve got six months or so before that’s an issue. In terms of the Tokyo Whale, it’s a supply issue, but it’s also a sentiment issue.”
News that an influential bitcoin holder is taking a break from selling has added to a bullish case for the digital currency. It might also be the case that the remaining bitcoins will be redistributed back to the creditors as most of them have indicated they would wish to have their bitcoin back instead of fiat.
Twitter users said the next court hearing is not until September 2018 and there is also a high probability that the remaining 160BTC will not be dumped on the open market.
People have been asking me my source for potential Civil Rehabilitation for Mt Gox insolvency, and that Nobuaki Kobayashi probably will not dump the remaining 160k #Bitcoin $BTC. Here is a screenshot of the document from Tokyo High Court.
Link is here: https://t.co/ndOIbr4bIE pic.twitter.com/PmN6XJn1X2
— Coin Panda (@8bitandstuff) March 11, 2018
You can read the full report here (PDF). Scroll down for English translation.
A trustee of defunct Tokyo bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox sold more than 35,000 bitcoin, worth about $400 million at the time, to pay off creditors, according to details of the sale published by a company trustee last week.
Mt. Gox closed in 2014 and filed for bankruptcy after the theft of 850,000 bitcoin. In order to liquidate Mt. Gox’s remaining 166,000 bitcoin, worth about $1.6 billion at Monday’s prices, lawyer and trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi said he still needs regulatory approval. The key point to bear in mind now is that Nobuaki Kobayashi has sold enough bitcoin to cover creditors’ losses over Mt Gox insolvency. Civil Rehabilitation may see remaining 166k btc distributed to the creditors themselves.
The price of bitcoin prices briefly recovered over the weekend. The digital currency rose 6.96 percent from Friday’s close to a high of $9,885.22 Monday, and prices later fell to $9,241.17 as of 12:40 p.m. ET Monday.
Bitcoin fell below $10,000 and shed nearly 18 percent of its value over two days last week following increased regulatory scrutiny of cryptocurrency exchanges last week.
In order to pay back creditors, Kobayashi has sold 35,841 Bitcoin and 34,008 Bitcoin cash on behalf of the company since September of last year. This flood of bitcoin could have contributed to recent downward pressure.
Kelly said:
“It’s down 70 percent from top but at some point you run out of sellers. It looks as though the market’s trying to bottom out.”
There has been quite a bit of bad news for Bitcoin and crypto in general over the last few days with news of compromised accounts on Binance exchange, a statement from the U.S. SEC that expanded its scrutiny to cryptocurrency exchanges, and more news from Japanese regulators added to investor worries last week.
Jack Tatar, managing partner at Doyle Capital Management said:
“This is just one factor that’s impacting bitcoin at this point,”
Some Chicago Board of Exchange, or Cboe, bitcoin futures contracts expire Wednesday, which Tatar said could be adding to bitcoin’s downward price moves Monday and Tuesday.
However, it seems as if the FUD has gradually diminished and the stage is set for the recovery in bitcoin price that many have been predicting would begin in March.
