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Bitcoin worth $9 billion held by Mt. Gox, a cryptocurrency exchange that went bankrupt 10 years ago, will be returned to customers within a few days.
As Bitcoin may be released en masse to the market, it is expected to have a negative impact on the recently weak Bitcoin price.
The U.S. CNBC broadcast reported on the 1st (local time) that Mt. Gox, which was headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, would begin returning this amount of Bitcoin to thousands of customers within a few days.
Mt. Gox, once the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, collapsed in 2014 when it was revealed that up to 950,000 Bitcoins (about 82 trillion won at current prices) had been hacked, so this return is the first in about 10 years.
This is good news for hacking victims who have been waiting for a return for a long time, but it may be a burden on the price of Bitcoin, which has recently shown weakness, even collapsing the $60,000 level at one point.
The court-appointed bankruptcy administrator for Mt. Gox announced on this day that payments to approximately 20,000 creditors will begin early this month, and that payments will be made in a mix of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a cryptocurrency derived from this cryptocurrency.
When this exchange closed in February 2014, the price of Bitcoin was about $600, and is currently trading at about $62,000, which has increased more than 100 times.
John Glover, chief investment officer (CIO) of virtual currency lending company Ledn, told CNBC that Mt. Gox users have made a windfall and that there is a high possibility that they will sell bitcoin and cash it out.
James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, a digital asset investment and research company, said that releasing Mt. Gox holdings into the market has been a concern for investors for a long time, and that investors' concerns are natural.
Some say that although the price of Bitcoin is under pressure this month due to the return of Mt. Gox, there is a possibility of a rebound starting next month.
Since most of Mt. Gox's customers are long-term Bitcoin advocates, they are likely to continue to hold it, so the impact on the market may be short-term.
Jacob Joseph, a research analyst at cryptocurrency data provider CCData, said the market is fully capable of absorbing the selling pressure and that the impact may already be reflected in recent price movements.
CNBC said it is worth noting that there are several other reasons for Bitcoin's recent decline.
The broadcast added that virtual currencies are inherently volatile and particularly sensitive to changes in the interest rate environment, and the delay in the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut is worrying investors.
