Mt. Gox Moves Nearly $1 Billion in Bitcoin—Are More Repayments Imminent?

Almost $1 billion worth of Bitcoin in wallets belonging to defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox was moved early Tuesday morning, according to on-chain data tracked by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence. 

A Bitcoin address labeled by Arkham as “Mt. Gox Cold Wallet” transferred 10,608 Bitcoin, or around $988 million worth, to two separate addresses—185 BTC to a hot wallet it controls, and the remaining 10,423 BTC to a fresh Bitcoin address. 

The 185 BTC, or $17 million worth, was later sent to an address belonging to crypto exchange Kraken. 

The transactions are the first major movement from Mt. Gox wallets since March, when around the same amount of Bitcoin was moved. Previous transfers to exchanges have been linked to Mt. Gox’s lengthy creditor repayment process, but a spokesperson for Kraken declined comment Tuesday when reached by Decrypt.

Kraken is one of five crypto exchanges working with the Mt. Gox trustee to facilitate billions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin payments back to creditors.

The now-defunct Mt. Gox exchange lost around 850,000 BTC back in 2014 due to a vulnerability in the Bitcoin source code, which forced it to file for bankruptcy. Since that time, creditors have been waiting for their repayments, which formally began last year.

About 19,500 creditors have been repaid since that time, and data from Arkham shows that Mt. Gox balances decreased by more than 100,000 BTC since July 2024, with labeled wallets now holding around 35,000 BTC—or around $3.2 billion worth. 

While others were expecting to be repaid this year, the Mt. Gox trustee pushed back payments again last month, now expecting to make repayments by the end of October 2026. The rescheduled crediting was approved in a Tokyo court last month as the exchange’s court-appointed trustee cited incomplete creditor procedures, among other issues.

The first major batch of repayments led to a sharp sell-off for Bitcoin, as creditors received access to coins for the first time in years and took advantage of the asset’s steep rise. 

Bitcoin has dropped around 0.5% in the last 24 hours and nearly 11% in the last week. It is now changing hands at $93,302—almost 26% off its August all-time high above $126,000.