By
Bhushan Akolkar
November 23rd, 2023
The documents leaked by Mt. Gox website say that the firm paid $200,000 to its parent company Tibanne.
According to the recently leaked report, the bankrupt Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox paid approximately $200,000 to its parent company Tibanne after it had filed for bankruptcy.
The revealed information was published on goxdox.org website. The report says that on May 26th, Tibanne, the web hosting services firm also owned by Gox CEO Mark Karpeles, charged Mt. Gox for rendered services.
While Mt.Gox is waiting the results of the bankruptcy proceedings, Tibanne is a separate copany and not subject to the court proceedings.
Among the services were server fees, expenses on employees and office rent. Still, as Reuters reported in March, there were no other full time workers besides the company’s CEO Mark Karpeles. The other employees worked on a one-year contract basis.
Nobuaki Kobayashi, the bankruptcy trustee, approved two invoices from May for payment from the exchange’s remained assets. Being appointed by the court, Kobayashi has the right to administer and dispose the assets of the company. The invoices were issued during Mt.Gox’s civil rehabilitation.
The leaked report revealed that Mt. Gox’s funds were estimated at $7.6 million, although in the bankruptcy application the claimed sum totaled $38 million. Where all of those funds went is unknown, still it is likely that some of that money went to pay its corporate debts.
Moreover, informing the creditors about the proceedings through physical mailout costed $85,000. However, the information had already benn published on the firm’s website.
The assets were not part of bitcoins (200,000 BTC) regained after 850,000 bitcoins were stolen in a hacking attack before February. The recovered bitcoins are valued at about $125 million at current market prices.
The new were negatively accepted by the bitcoin community in Japan as many people lost their money after Mt. Gox collapsed. Furthermore, many of them lost six-figure dollar sums.
The reveled report is likely to increase tensions at the creditors’ meeting, which will be held on July 23rd in Tokyo. It is also expected that Karpeles himself will attend the meeting.
According to the recent interview of Karpeles to the Wall Street Journal, he still lives in Tokyo and is working on maintaining Tibanne’s operations with the remaining employees.
Karpeles said he is also going to sell other assets of Mt. Gox, among others domain name properties such as bitcoins.com.
Today, two groups, Sunlot Holdings’ ‘savegox.com’ and another group supported by OKCoin exchange and its partners in Tokyo, are trying to return creditors’ money. They intend to restart Mt.Gox business and run it as a bitcoin exchange. The two groups are currently in consultation with the court.