Nearly half of the Bitcoin owed to Mt. Gox creditors has been distributed, but after a decade of waiting, many creditors are still holding onto their coins.
Over 41.5%, or 59,000 Bitcoin from the total of 141,686 BTC, has been redistributed to creditors of the defunct Mt. Gox exchange.
Despite receiving nearly $4 billion worth of Bitcoin, the Mt. Gox creditors aren’t selling, according to a July 29 Glassnode report.
“Creditors opted to receive BTC, rather than fiat, which was new in Japanese bankruptcy law… As such, it is relatively likely that only a subset of these distributed coins will be truly sold onto the market.”
BTC: Mt. Gox Trustee Outflows. Source: Glassnode
Over $9.4 billion worth of Bitcoin was owed to approximately 127,000 Mt. Gox creditors who have been waiting for over 10 years to recover their funds - threatening significant sell pressure that could tank Bitcoin’s price.
The report comes a week after Kraken finished the Mt. Gox Bitcoin distribution to creditors on July 24
Mt. Gox was a prominent Bitcoin exchange based in Japan that collapsed in 2014 following a hack.
The exchange was founded in 2010 and processed more than 70% of all Bitcoin transactions at its peak. Mt. Gox lost 850,000 BTC in its security breach, making it one of the biggest hacks ever.
Mt. Gox creditors are not selling based on exchange trading volume
While Glassnode notes that its theory rests on some “degree of speculation,” underlying data from cryptocurrency exchanges also suggests that Mt. Gox creditors are not selling.
Notably, the spot cumulative volume delta (CVD), a metric that measures the net difference between spot buying and selling trade volume on centralized exchanges, has seen no significant uptick on Karken, after the Mt. Gox BTC distribution.
The report notes:
“We can see a marginal uptick in sell-side pressure following the distribution. However, this remains well within typical day-to-day ranges.”
Bitcoin CVD, Kraken exchange. Source: Glassnode
The lack of selling pressure is surprising, considering that Bitcoin price increased over 8,500% in the 10 years since Mt. Gox’s collapse.
The Mt.Gox scam and Japanese crypto regulation | Cointelegraph Documentary. Source: Cointelegraph
Bitcoin investors shift back to hodling
The current distribution of Bitcoin suggests that investors are done locking in profit and shifting back to “hodling," which is crypto slang for holding on for dear life.
Notably, the proportion of Bitcoin held by new investors saw a significant decline, akin to behavior around macro market tops.
This highlights an investor behavior shift towards hodling, according to Glassnode:
“This describes long-term investors spending and selling coins to satisfy new demand in the run-up to the $73k ATH. The rate of decline across these curves has slowed of late, suggesting a gradual return to HODLing dominant investor behavior.”
Bitcoin: Supply last active 1 year+. Source: Glassnode
Over 65.8% of the Bitcoin supply has been inactive for over one year, while over 54% was inactive for over two years.
