- The Mt. Gox trustee may have sold millions of dollars’ worth of BTC and BCH on the open market
- Evidence suggests that Nobuaki Kobayashi went against advice and dumped on the open market
- Kobayashi had been advised to sell OTC to avoid crashing the market
Mt. Gox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi may have sold millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash on the open market after all, according to leaked court documents. A blog post from ‘GoxDox’ (a group of Mt. Gox creditors), their first in five years, contained evidence that appeared to back up the long-held belief that Kobayashi ignored advice given over the years regarding the sale of the Mt. Gox fortune and sold huge amounts on the open market, potentially crashing the price of Bitcoin.
Method of Sale Never Revealed
Kobayashi has sold Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash in chunks over the past two years, including big sales in March and June last year, but has never revealed the method of sale except for a statement in 2018 when he said that “upon consultation with cryptocurrency transaction experts, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash were sold in a manner that had no effect on market price and not by ordinary sale on an exchange…”.
GoxDox contests this though, utilizing the following chart that on the surface appears to back up their argument, but in reality does not show a comprehensive enough pattern of cause and effect to lay the blame at Kobayashi’s door:
Bank Transfers Could Shed Light
More convincing however, are the court documents GoxDox uncovered that show bank transfers from Japanese exchange BitPoint going to the trustee’s account totaling some 34.3 billion yen (roughly $312.5 million today). This wouldn’t ordinarily be a problem if BitPoint offered an OTC service, but they don’t (at least not publicly), meaning that Kobayashi may have indeed done all his selling via traditional markets after all.
The only explanation is that BitPoint conducted a private OTC sale, which cannot be confirmed or discounted until one or both parties have responded to the accusations made by GoxDox.
With some 137,891 Bitcoin and 162,106 Bitcoin Cash remaining in Kobayashi’s possession, investors will be concerned that his impact on the markets has the potential to be more damaging than he claims.
