Approximately 1,300 Bitcoin (BTC) have been sold in the past week from wallets linked to the Mt. Gox attack.
Arkham blockchain analyst Emmett Gallic stated that addresses linked to Aleksey Bilyuchenko, who is accused by the US Department of Justice of involvement in the Mt. Gox hack, transferred approximately 1,300 BTC, worth about $114 million, to unnamed exchanges in the last seven days. These addresses still hold approximately 4,100 BTC (approximately $360 million), and a total of 2,300 BTC has been sold to date.
According to publicly available information, Bilyuchenko, along with Alexander Vinnik, operated the cryptocurrency platform BTC-e from 2011 onwards. BTC-e had a notorious global reputation for being used to launder proceeds from crimes such as ransomware, identity theft, and drug trafficking, and was shut down by law enforcement in 2017.
The U.S. Department of Justice accuses Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner of hacking into Mt. Gox, then the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, starting in 2011. According to the prosecution, approximately 647,000 Bitcoin were stolen as a result of the attack, which led to Mt. Gox’s bankruptcy. The indictment also alleges that the defendants used some of the stolen funds to launder money and finance the operations of BTC-e.
*This is not investment advice.