Analyst: Mt. Gox's repayments in early July will increase selling pressure in the BTC market

Defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox said Monday it will begin distributing assets stolen from customers in a 2014 hack in the first week of July, years after the deadline kept shifting.

“The trustee has been preparing repayments in bitcoin and bitcoin cash in accordance with the plan,” trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi said in a statement posted on Mt. Gox’s website on Monday.

“Repayments will start from July 2024,” Kobayashi said, adding that due diligence and certain security measures would need to be carried out before payments could be made.

Traders say the repayments are largely seen as adding to selling pressure in the bitcoin market as early investors will receive the asset at a much higher price than they entered before 2013, making them inclined to sell at least some of their holdings.

Mt. Gox was once the world's top cryptocurrency exchange, handling more than 70% of Bitcoin transactions in its early years. In early 2014, hackers attacked the exchange, resulting in the loss of approximately 740,000 Bitcoins ($15 billion at current prices). The hack was the largest of many attacks on the exchange from 2010-13.

The trustee developed a repayment plan that had been in the works for several years and received an October 2024 deadline from a Tokyo court last year.

In May, the exchange moved more than 140,000 BTC (worth about $9 billion) from cold wallets to unknown addresses in 13 transactions, the first on-chain wallet transfer in five years.

In the minutes after Mt. Gox’s announcement, bitcoin prices fell from more than $62,300 in early Asian trading to below $62,100, according to CoinGecko.