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Last week Bitcoin.com News reported on two old bitcoin addresses created in 2013 sending 10,001 bitcoin to a myriad of wallets. Heuristics and clustering techniques indicate that the bitcoins were associated with Mt Gox, roughly around the same time the exchange was hacked in June 2011. Five days later, 5,000 bitcoins were transferred from a wallet created on the same day in 2013, and the stash of coins were also connected to Mt Gox in some type of fashion.
Another 5,000 so-called ‘sleeping bitcoins,’ from a wallet created on December 19, 2013, were transferred on September 4, 2022. The action, caught by Btcparser.com, took place five days after 10,001 bitcoin (BTC) moved from two bitcoin addresses created close to nine years ago on the same day in 2013. The 5,000 BTC sent on Sunday, September 4, 2022, have a mysterious history as they are associated with the now-defunct Mt Gox bitcoin exchange right around the same time the exchange was hacked in June 2011.
In June 2011, Mt Gox was hacked and reports at the time noted that 25,000 BTC was stolen from the exchange that was siphoned out of 478 accounts. After the breach, an individual published the Mt Gox userbase on Pastebin in plaintext with hashed passwords. On Sunday, June 19, 2011, Mt Gox saw volatile trading activity and that day, BTC’s price dropped from $17 per unit to $0.01 per unit. 2,000 BTC was reportedly stolen on June 19, 2011, as well. The BTC address “1McUC” is somehow associated with the Mt Gox saga and was created on June 19, 2011. The bitcoin address “1McUC” is also connected to the 15,001 BTC that moved on August 28, August 29, and September 4, 2022.
When our newsdesk reported on the 10,001 BTC associated with Mt Gox, there wasn’t much fanfare about the coins moving. Coindesk columnist Jocelyn Yang, however, discussed the situation with a data engineer at Coin Metrics. The engineer said the bitcoins from 2013 may have been associated with “an old Kraken cold storage address, a Kraken OTC (over the counter) deal, [or] a Kraken user.” Then on September 3, 2022, the OXT researcher Ergobtc published a Twitter Thread that cites our report quoting OXT user Taisia, the admin of the GFISchannel Telegram group.
“By referring to the work of a well-informed OXT user, bitcoin.com [is] much closer to the mark than Coindesk,” Ergobtc said. “Despite a Kraken deposit, these coins are not sourced from Kraken. They are however sourced from Mt Gox and possibly controlled by Jeb McCaleb.”
Ergobtc further discussed the two addresses (1,& 2) and explained how OXT can backtrack the source of the coins. “Doing so leads to a large cluster with a user annotation,” Ergobtc details. “The user annotation to this cluster links to a blog post by @wizsecurity blog. Wizsec is the Mt Gox saga expert. The blog post references an address belonging to Jeb McCaleb and wrongfully claimed by CSW.”
The Twitter thread further explains that the second transaction for 5,000 BTC was “clearly made to Coinbase.” The OXT researcher added:
Evidenced by the telltale denomination splitting with secondary splits down to 10 BTC. Splits are co-spent with Coinbase clustered addresses. These coins are sourced from the Gox saga, and possibly controlled by Jeb McCaleb. Two txs for 5K BTC were sent to Kraken and Coinbase.
At block height 752,637, on September 4, 2022, 5,000 BTC was sent from “18xGH” and the address was created on the same day (December 19, 2013) as the two addresses that sent 10,001 BTC on Sunday, August 28, and Monday, August 29, 2022. Moreover, by backtracking the transactions, the 5,000 BTC are also connected to the Mt Gox saga and the address “1McUC.” At the time of writing, the address “bc1qp” held 4,929.43 BTC that stemmed from the 5,000 sent on Sunday. By Monday morning, 8:00 a.m. (ET), the coins were dispersed to a myriad of multi-signature bitcoin addresses. Bitcoin.com News spoke with the admin of the GFISchannel Telegram group Taisia about the latest movement.
Onchain visual provided by the GFISchannel administrator Taisia.
“The situation is quite strange,” Taisia told Bitcoin.com News. “The dev of oxt.me confirmed to us that in his opinion, the bitcoins are indeed connected with Mt Gox, and possibly belong to Jed McCaleb.” The GFISchannel administrator also said she spoke with the former Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles who “did not directly confirm this information, although he did not rule out that it was ‘close to the truth.’”
“If these are really McCaleb’s bitcoins, why won’t he make a statement to stop speculation on this topic?” Taisia asked during her conversation with Bitcoin.com News. “And, returning to the original question, why are all these movements going on right now? In the midst of the FUD with trustee payments and Vinnick’s recent extradition to the United States.”
Once again a blockchain parser, onchain analysis, and heuristics discovered thousands of bitcoins with an interesting past. These ancient bitcoins that sat idle for close to nine years only to wake up when BTC is trading for $19.9K. It should be noted that these coins have absolutely nothing to do with the bitcoin payments associated with the Mt Gox trustee, except for mere coincidental timing with the trustee’s latest update. Presently, Mt Gox creditors have not seen a hard date set for payment distribution, despite rumors and inaccurate reports last week saying this was the case.
