Bitstamp will aim to distribute Mt. Gox bitcoin 'as soon as possible' once it arrives

Crypto exchange Bitstamp will aim to distribute its portion of the bitcoin repayments to Mt. Gox creditors swiftly, even though it has up to 60 days to do so once it receives the coins.

"According to the agreement with the Mt. Gox trustees, Bitstamp has 60 days to distribute the tokens, though we are of course working to make sure those investors are made whole as soon as possible," the exchange said in a statement.

This gives some clues to the somewhat murky timeline of the Mt. Gox repayments, a key question for market participants.

We know that repayments are being processed through five exchanges, which have varying time frames for distributing the coins once they have received them from the trustee. We also know that two Japanese exchanges, Bitbank and SBI VC Trade, have already received and seemingly distributed their allocated funds — doing so within hours rather than the maximum two weeks they agreed to.

What is less clear is exactly when the coins will be handed out to each of the remaining exchanges. Presumably, the remainder of the bitcoin will be handed out to the other three exchanges in the near term, either one after the other or all at the same time. Then, these exchanges will make the bitcoin available to their respective creditors before their respective deadlines.

Kraken has the longest deadline, with up to 90 days to process the payouts. As mentioned, Bitstamp will take up to 60 days, while BitGo will take up to 20 days. While Bitstamp clarified that it would try to make the payments as early as possible, BitGo declined to comment, and Kraken did not reply.

This matters because there is a lot more bitcoin still to come. While the trustee sent 47,229 bitcoin ($2.7 billion) to Bitbank and SBI VC Trade, he still has a further 94,771 bitcoin ($5.4 billion) remaining to be distributed.

In the meantime, along with the Mt. Gox uncertainty and ongoing sales of bitcoin by the German government, the price of bitcoin slid to its current price of $57,000 — having hit lows of $54,000 toward the end of last week.