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Last week, Bitcoin.com News reported on two old bitcoin addresses created in 2013 that sent 10,001 bitcoins to countless wallets. Heuristics and clustering techniques indicate that bitcoins were associated with Mt Gox around the same time the exchange was hacked in June 2011. Five days later, 5,000 bitcoins were transferred from a wallet created on the same day in 2013, and the holding of coins was also linked to Mt Gox in one way or another.
Another 5,000 so-called ‘dormant bitcoins’, from a wallet created on December 19, 2013, were transferred on September 4, 2022. The action, captured by Btcparser.com, took place five days after 10,001 bitcoins (BTC) were moved from two bitcoin addresses created almost nine years ago on the same day in 2013. The 5,000 BTC sent on Sunday, September 4, 2022, have a mysterious history as they are associated with the now defunct Mt Gox bitcoin exchange around the same time as Exchange was hacked in June 2011.
When our news desk reported the 10,001 BTC linked to Mt Gox, there wasn’t much fanfare about the coins moving. However, Coindesk columnist Jocelyn Yang discussed the situation with a data engineer at Coin Metrics. The engineer said the 2013 bitcoins may have been associated with “an old Kraken cold storage address, a Kraken OTC (over the counter) deal, [or] a Kraken user.” So September 3, 2022, the OXT researcher Ergobtc published a Twitter thread quoting our report quoting OXT user Taisia, the admin of the GFISchannel Telegram group.
“Referring to the work of a well-informed OXT user, bitcoin.com [is] much closer to the mark than Coindesk,” said Ergobtc. “Despite a Kraken deposit, these coins are not sourced from Kraken. However, they are sourced from Mt Gox and possibly controlled by Jeb McCaleb.”
Ergobtc further discussed the two addresses (1, & 2) and explained how OXT can trace back the source of the coins. “Doing so leads to a large cluster of a user comment,” details Ergobtc. “The user comment for this cluster links to a blog post by @wizsecurity blog. Wizsec is the Mt Gox saga expert. The blog post refers to an address belonging to Jeb McCaleb and wrongfully claimed by CSW.”
The Twitter thread further explains that the second transaction for 5,000 BTC was “clearly made to Coinbase.” The OXT researcher added:
Evidenced by the revealing denomination split with secondary splits down to 10 BTC. Splits are used in conjunction with Coinbase pooled addresses. Gox saga, and possibly controlled by Jeb McCaleb, these coins. Two txs for 5K BTC were sent to Kraken and Coinbase.
At block height 752,637, on September 4, 2022, 5,000 BTC was sent from “18xGH” and the address was created on the same day (December 19, 2013) as the two addresses that sent 10,001 BTC on Sunday, August 28 and Monday, August 29, 2022. By tracing back the transactions, 5,000 BTC is also linked to the Mt Gox saga and the address “1McUC.” At the time of writing, the address “bc1qp” had 4,929.43 BTC stemming from the 5,000 sent on Sunday. By Monday morning, 8:00 am (ET), the coins were dispersed to a myriad of multi-signature bitcoin addresses. Bitcoin.com News spoke with the administrator of the GFISchannel Telegram group Taisia about the latest move.
“The situation is quite strange,” Taisia told Bitcoin.com News. “The developer of oxt.me confirmed to us that in his opinion bitcoins are indeed linked to Mt Gox and possibly belong to Jed McCaleb.” The GFISchannel administrator also said she spoke with former Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles who “did not directly confirm this information, although he did not rule out it being ‘close to the truth’.”
“If these are indeed McCaleb’s bitcoins, why won’t he make a statement to stop speculation on this subject?” Taisia asked during the conversation with Bitcoin.com News. “And to go back to the original question, why is all this movement happening right now? In the middle of FUD with executor payments and Vinnick’s recent extradition to the United States.”
Once again, a blockchain parser, onchain analysis and heuristics discovered thousands of bitcoins with an interesting past. These ancient bitcoins sat dormant for close to nine years, only to wake up when BTC trades at $19.9K. It should be noted that these coins have absolutely nothing to do with the bitcoin payments associated with the Mt Gox trustee, other than just coincidental timing with the trustee’s latest update. Currently, Mt Gox creditors have not seen a hard date for payment distribution, despite rumors and inaccurate reports last week that said this was the case.
What do you think about the whale that moved 15,001 bitcoins this week and its association with Mt Gox? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.
Image credit: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, GFISchannel, OXT
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