The oldest crypto exchange hacked by hackers may cause problems for bitcoin

Eight years after the hacking of the largest exchange at the time, Mt. Gox, its representatives decided to return 137 thousand bitcoins. Many call this a possible «black swan».

Jed McCaleb founded Mt. Gox in 2006 as a platform for trading various online cards. Later, in 2010, he became interested in bitcoin and decided to create a platform for trading BTC.

After 10 months, Jed sold the exchange to Mark Karpeles. At that time, BTC was worth $ 1. And in June 2011, a hacker stole 25k BTC from the exchange. In the following years, there was a series of small attacks and technical problems. Despite all the problems, Mt. Gox became the top exchange and accounted for 70% of the total bitcoin trading volume. And in 2013, BTC exceeded $ 1000.

In February 2014, the exchange’s clients started having problems with withdrawing funds. And on February 7, the exchange stopped withdrawals, citing the fact that they needed a «clear technical understanding of currency processes.»

On the 10th, they admitted that they had found a bug in the software that led to a change in transaction details. In effect, this meant that BTC could be re-sent. Withdrawals from the exchange were stopped.

on February 24, a document appeared stating that Mt. Gox became insolvent after losing 750k client BTC to 100k of its own. Today, this amounts to $ 18,000,000,000 (4% of the total BTC supply).

on March 20, 2014, Mt. Gox announced that they had managed to recover 200k BTC and were ready to return them to customers. For many years, the situation with Mt. Gox was stagnant due to lengthy litigation and investigations.

But in November 2021, Mt. Gox and the Tokyo District Court formalized an official «Rehabilitation Plan». And recently, on July 6, ex-customers of the exchange received an email asking for a refund. Mt. Gox stated that «The Trustee is currently preparing to make payments»: a total of 137k BTC worth $ 3 billion.

Such a large supply at the same time can seriously reduce the value of BTC. However, there are at least two reasons why there may not be a «dump»:

— Not everyone will sell, these are very early adopters of BTC, they know how to wait
— Customers have gone through 3 cycles of ups and downs, so it is unlikely that they will start selling en masse during the crypto zoom

However, even if everyone sells their BTC, it will be comparable to the Luna Foundation 's dump (88k BTC) and the sale of 3AC assets. The market has recently survived these events and, despite this, there is even a slight correction.