By
Temitope Olatunji
April 26th, 2024
Creditors will start receiving cash repayments from the Mt. Gox Trustee this year. These repayments are specified to be cash and may not include crypto.
The defunct Japanese crypto exchange Mt. Gox is set to begin creditor repayments this year, about a decade after its collapse. Creditors of the exchange received an email on Wednesday where rehabilitation trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi stated that all persons whose repayment applications were approved would start receiving cash payments.
The email notes that payments will begin sometime this year and continue until next year. However, it does not specify when the repayments will start or when each creditor will receive their payments:
“Due to the large number of rehabilitation creditors who will receive repayment, the varying types of repayments, the different preparation and processing times required to make the repayment, repayments will continue into 2024. For these and other reasons, the specific timing of repayment to individual rehabilitation creditors is undetermined…”
Some observers have noticed that the email only mentions cash repayments for Mt. Gox creditors. This excludes payments for creditors hoping to receive Bitcoin. According to MtGoxBalanceBot, an X account that tracks balances on all known addresses held by the MtGox Trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi holds 137,890.9811 BTC. The account also notes that the Trustee has an additional 3,795 BTC on unknown addresses.
In addition to the email sent to creditors, the Trustee also published an announcement. The publication states that Nobuaki Kobayashi received over 7 billion Japanese yen (about $47 million) to finance the creditor repayments.
Mt. Gox Repayments Come After Multiple Postponements
In September, Mt. Gox extended its repayment deadline to October 31, 2024, after receiving approval from the Tokyo District Court. The previous deadline was October 31, 2023, decided after multiple delays. Last October, Mt. Gox asked affected customers to choose a payment method before January. In February, the top two creditors, MGIF and Bitcoinica, decided to receive Bitcoin payments instead of fiat. However, the company then delayed the repayments multiple times, until October, before the current postponement. As of the September extension, the Mt. Gox estate held 142,000 Bitcoin (BTC), 143,000 Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and 69 billion Japanese Yen.
Launched in 2010, Mt. Gox was the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, responsible for 70% of global Bitcoin trades by 2013. However, only four years after it launched, Mt. Gox paused customer withdrawals after a major hack where the exchange allegedly lost 850,000 Bitcoins. The exchange then suspended trading and later filed for bankruptcy protection.
In June, the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) announced charges against two Russian nationals allegedly involved in the Mt. Gox hack. In an official press release, the DoJ announced that Alexey Bilyuchenko, 43, and Aleksandr Verner, 29, stole approximately 647,000 Bitcoins. Bilyuchenko also stands accused along with Verner and other conspirators in a separate lawsuit, of using the stolen funds to operate illicit exchange BTC-e from 2011 to 2017. According to the press release, the co-conspirators used BTC-e to launder funds for cybercriminals worldwide. At current prices, the value of the stolen Bitcoin is $23.6 billion.