For years, market participants have dreaded the day that Mt. Gox creditors would begin to receive repayments. After all, if customers of the bankrupt crypto exchange were to receive even a fraction of their holdings a decade later, they might be inclined to sell their coins immediately.
Surprisingly, this doesn’t seem to be the case just yet, even though the exchange finally started the process of distributing assets to creditors through its exchange partners earlier this week. At the time of writing, the price of bitcoin was trading at around $67,100, up 4.2% in the last 24 hours.
“Mt. Gox distributions are almost 50% complete, and the bitcoin price is doing just fine,” said Glassnode analyst “@_Checkmate” on X.
Kraken confirmed the “successful distribution” of bitcoin and bitcoin cash on Tuesday, and Bitstamp announced it had received the Mt. Gox assets on Wednesday.
“We’re working diligently to distribute them to our Bitstamp customers who are Mt. Gox creditors. Please allow up to one week for security checks. We’ll inform you when the transfer is finalized,” said Bitstamp on X.
Some users who claim to be Mt. Gox creditors reported that they had received a bitcoin transfer from Bitstamp, but were unable to sell the assets on the exchange.
“So we have our coins and cannot withdraw until we call customer support. We call them and they tell us to set up a video call.. ALL of the dates are full,” said Reddit user No-Ad6269.
However, there were others on the Mt. Gox subreddit who were considerably more enthused with their situation.
Reddit user Academic-Truck-6370 shared a screenshot of a $2.3 million bitcoin payout received from Bitstamp. The user reportedly piled $60,000 into bitcoin in the final hours of Mt. Gox being live, and although he received significantly less than his initial balance, was happy with the outcome.
When asked whether he intended to cash out immediately, the user said he plans to, “HODL 90%, convert 10% to cash, spend a little BTC directly.”
In fact, some users even said they found themselves better off as a result of the Mt. Gox bankruptcy. Reddit user Critical_Entry_3259 called the situation a “forced hodl” that “worked out well.”
