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Bankrupt crypto exchange Mt. Gox has moved millions of dollars in Bitcoin (BTC) for the first time in eight months, signaling continued preparation for long-awaited creditor repayments.
Related: Oldest crypto exchange under Chapter 15 bankruptcy delays payouts again
On-chain data from Arkham showed the estate transferred 185 BTC, valued at $16.8 million, to a Kraken wallet following a small test transaction.
The latest transfer is part of a broader reshuffling of Mt. Gox’s holdings. According to Arkham, another wallet associated with the estate received change output totaling roughly $936 million in BTC shortly after the movement to Kraken.
The last major activity from Mt. Gox occurred eight months ago, when administrators sent $77.4 million in Bitcoin to the same exchange.
Mt. Gox was a Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange that once dominated the global market, processing more than 70% of all BTC trades at its peak in early 2014. The platform became one of the first crypto trading exchanges to go bankrupt.
In 2014, the exchange revealed the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin, an amount then valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
In February 2014, the exchange halted trading, shut down its website, and sought bankruptcy protection in Japan.
In March 2014, it filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in the U.S. Chapter 15 is designed for cross-border insolvency cases, allowing foreign companies undergoing bankruptcy proceedings abroad to protect their U.S.-based assets.
By April, the company had entered liquidation. Roughly 200,000 BTC were later recovered, but the cause of the massive shortfall remained uncertain at first, with theories ranging from theft to internal failures.
In 2015, new analysis from Tokyo-based security firm WizSec concluded that “most or all” of the missing Bitcoin had been drained directly from Mt. Gox’s hot wallet over several years, beginning in late 2011.
The fallout, including the arrest and eventual conviction of CEO Mark Karpelès, pushed Japan to establish the world’s first comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto exchanges and digital assets.
