Mt.Gox Attorney holds $1.9bln worth cryptos, Sold $400mln worth BTC
Nobuaki Kobayashi, a Tokyo based attorney and bankruptcy trustee for the inoperative company Mt.Gox exchange, disclosed Wednesday that he had sold about $400 million of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash since late September. Notably, Kobayashi, who liquidated the token’s to settle Mt.Gox’s creditors, is still holding Bitcoins and Bitcoin Cash worth $1.90 billion.
According to Bloomberg, Kobayachi did not disclose his selling strategy. However, he tried to get “as high a price as possible.” Furthermore, the disclosures provided on the Mt.Gox website indicate that the average price realized from the sales was $10,105.
Four years ago, Mt.Gox, which was one of the world’s biggest Bitcoin exchange handling nearly 70% of Bitcoin transactions, announced that it lost 850,000 Bitcoins, then worth about $500 million. Mt.Gox, which blamed hackers for the loss, later revealed that it has recovered about 200,000 Bitcoins. Mt.Gox CEO Mark Karpeles apologized to investors and said he is co-operating with investigators.
In related news, a BBC Radio 4 investigation has pointed finger on a UK company, Always Efficient LLP, to the laundering of 650,000 Bitcoins stolen from Mr.Gox. The investigation also revealed that almost half of the stolen coin ended up at BTC-e. The registered office address of Always Efficient is in East London. However, the same address is shared by several other firms. Authorities suspect the firms are involved in money laundering. The actual owner of Always Efficient is yet to be established.
