Mt. Gox is preparing for a new round of payments to its creditors.
Cryptocurrency markets traded lower Wednesday morning as traders reacted to new large transfers from defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox.
Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped 2% in the past 24 hours, while Ethereum (ETH) has dropped 3%. Polkadot (DOT) has managed to climb 3%, but Solana (SOL) has dropped 1%.
Among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap, BitTorrent (BTT) emerged as the biggest gainer, up 22%. Tron (TRX) followed with a 12% gain, and Polygon (MATIC) rose 10%.
Tron’s rise was fueled by the influx of memecoin traders into the ecosystem after Sun.io launched the Sun Pump token launchpad. BitTorrent, also a Tron ecosystem project, likely benefited from Sun Pump’s growth as well.
Meanwhile, Litecoin (LTC), JasmyCoin (JASMY) and Helium (HNT) were the biggest losers, each dropping around 5%.
The combined market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is down 2.3% over the past 24 hours.
Mt. Gox Distributions Spook Traders
The price drop comes as Mt. Gox appears to be preparing for another round of payments to its creditors.
On Wednesday, Mt. Gox transferred approximately $75.36 million in Bitcoin to Bitstamp’s wallet address, likely sparking fear and selling pressure among investors.
The transfer came a day after an address linked to Mt. Gox transferred 13,265 BTC, worth $784 million, according to data from Arkham Intelligence. The exchange sent 12,000 BTC to an address labeled “1PuQB,” while the rest was sent to “1Jbez,” identified as Mt. Gox’s cold wallet.
Mt. Gox still holds over 34,164 BTC worth over $2 billion.
Five companies have been tasked with redistributing Mt. Gox assets to creditors who held assets on the exchange at the time of its collapse, including Bitstamp, Bitgo, Kraken, Bitbank and SBI VC Trade.
Despite the declines, institutional capital has flowed into U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Bitcoin Spot ETFs saw a combined inflow of $150 million between August 19 and 20, according to data from Farside Investors. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) led the charge with $147 million, while the 21Shares Ark Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) received $51.9 million.
Stock markets are falling
U.S. stocks are down today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.20%, while the S&P 500 fell 0.22% and the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.25%.
The moves come as traders await the release today of the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s July meeting, which are expected to provide insight into future monetary policy decisions.
Most major Asian stock markets also declined during Wednesday’s session. Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 0.29%, while Taiwan’s Taiex fell 0.85% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.69%. Australia’s All Ordinaries and Korea’s KOSPI indices bucked the trend with gains of 0.32% and 0.17%, respectively.
Bitcoin’s Growing Dominance
A study by on-chain analytics provider Glassnode shows that Bitcoin’s share of the global cryptocurrency market cap has risen to 56% after hitting a low of 38% when markets bottomed in November 2022.
Ethereum dominance saw a 1.5% decline to 15.2%, while altcoins fell 5.9% to 21.3% from 27.2%, and stablecoins suffered the biggest decline of 9.9% to 7.4% from 17.3%.
