While initial reports suggested that a cold wallet linked to Mt. Gox transferred 6,800 BTC, F2pool founder later confirmed that the address was associated with the early miners of F2Pool, and not Mt. Gox.
A recent whale alert misassociated an F2pool cold wallet with Bitcoin (BTC) exchange Mt. Gox, which transferred 6,800 BTC to an unknown wallet just days after the former CEO Mark Karpeles revealed plans to redistribute BTC worth $6 billion to its creditors.
Mt. Gox was a Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange that shut down in Feb. 2014 after a hack that compromised 850,000 BTC. In a recent interview, Karpeles disclosed that the exchange had roughly 200,000 BTC in possession during the company’s closure, out of which the trustee sold roughly 50,000 BTC for $600 million in the past.
According to Karpeles, the remaining 150,000 BTC currently held by Mt. Gox has grown in value over the years — and is worth over $6 billion. After this revelation, the former CEO confirmed plans to redistribute the money and settle scores with the creditors.
Five days after Karpeles’ interview, Crypto Twitter’s @whale-alert highlighted that 6,800 BTC, worth nearly $319 million, were transferred to an unknown wallet from a cold wallet belonging to the now-defunct Mt. Gox exchange. Contradicting the whale alert, F2pool founder Chun Wang reportedly confirmed that the wallet address had the wrong marking and that the address was associated with the early miners of F2pool.
Despite being non-operational for over 8 years, the Mt. Gox team has previously shared a rehabilitation plan to compensate creditors. As pointed out by thisisbullish, the alleged wallet address linked to Mt. Gox has not recorded any outflows.
Disclaimer: A previous version of the story stated that 6,800 BTC were transferred from a cold wallet linked to Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. However, F2pool founder Chun Wang later denied the claims by clarifying that the wallet in question belonged to F2pool miners and was wrongly marked as Mtgox.
Related: Rare Bears Discord phishing attack nabs 800K in NFTs
While crypto businesses continue to adopt various security measures to fend off attacks, bad actors have kept up with the change to lure in unwary investors.
On Mar. 18, the recently launched nonfungible token (NFT) project, Rare Bears, confirmed a successful phishing attack — resulting in a loss of nearly $800,000 in NFTs.
As Cointelegraph reported, the hacker was able to compromise a moderator’s account on Discord and posted phishing links that ultimately drained user wallets. The Rare Bears team was eventually able to remove the compromised account and secure the server from further attacks.