Mt. Gox, once the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, finally began to repay its debts in July this year after 10 years of bankruptcy proceedings and several delays. It is expected that before October this year, Mt. Gox will pay 142,000 BTC and 143,000 BCH to creditors.
Mt.Gox announced that the deadline will be extended to October 31, 2025
However, earlier on the 10th, Mt. Gox issued an announcement stating that since many creditors have not yet completed the procedures required to receive repayments and various problems have arisen during the repayment process, a certain number of bankrupt creditors have not yet received repayments.
Therefore, in order to compensate these bankruptcy creditors as reasonably as possible, the bankruptcy administrator, after obtaining permission from the court, extended the deadline for compensation from October 31, 2024 to October 31, 2025 (Japan Standard Time).
Mt.Gox still has 44,000 Bitcoins
As for how many bitcoins Mt. Gox still has that have not been repaid to creditors? According to Arkham tracking data, it currently holds 44,000 bitcoins (worth about $2.7 billion).
Since there is more time for repayment, the expected selling pressure on Bitcoin will not be so concentrated, which may help ease investors' concerns.
Analysts: Selling pressure will be less than expected
In June this year, Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy, wrote a comment on the X platform, saying that he believed that the Bitcoin selling pressure caused by Mt. Gox would ultimately be less than expected.
He explained that since nearly 75% of creditors chose Early Payout (subject to a 10% reduction in value), only about 95,000 bitcoins will be used to pay compensation early (the remaining BTC will take longer to pay):
About 20,000 of these tokens belong to the claims fund
10,000 tokens belong to Bitcoinica BK
There are about 65,000 coins left that are owed to individual creditors.
And he expects that individual creditors will hold on to Bitcoin longer than the market expects:
Creditors are mainly long-term Bitcoin holders. They are early adopters who are technologically savvy.
Individual creditors have rejected attractive offers from claims funds over the years, suggesting they would rather get their bitcoin back than compensation denominated in U.S. dollars.
The capital gains tax impact of the sale would be significant. With prices rising, even if only 15% of the claims in kind were recovered, the claim holders would have made 140x the value (in USD) on the Bitcoin they recovered since the bankruptcy.
Therefore, in summary, he believes that the selling pressure of Bitcoin will not be greater than investors imagine. However, BCH may experience a more serious decline due to its low liquidity.
