The saga of the Mt. Gox cryptocurrency exchange and its creditor repayments continues as the company released a new statement about what will happen after its registration window closes.
On April 7, the former exchange released a statement from its rehabilitation trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, saying the deadline for creditors to provide repayment information clarification of the payee and payment type had passed. It said "base repayments, intermediate repayments and early lump-sum repayments" would continue until October 31, 2023. However, this deadline "may be extended with the permission of the Tokyo District Court." The note also said the trustee would make "necessary preparations" to make the repayment, including confirming repayment options and sharing information with banks, funds transfer providers, cryptocurrency exchanges or any other custodian involved in repayment.
For this reason, the note reads: "In light of this, it is expected that repayments will take some time to commence." The exchange's original collapse occurred in 2014, when it was forced to close after being hacked, losing 850,000 bitcoins. Despite the FTX disaster of November 2022, the demise of Mt. Gox remains the largest cryptocurrency heist in history.
There have been delays in repaying funds to those affected. In 2018, a Japanese court finally approved a compensation package. In March 2020, Kobayashi announced a new system where creditors can claim the remaining funds through proof of claim such as bank statements, transaction records and identification documents.
The deadline for submitting claims was set for October 2020 and was later pushed back to December. After all claims were received, the total was nearly $16 billion, more than was available for repayment.
In February 2023, the largest creditor, Mt. Gox Investment Fund, decided to choose to pay 90% of the arrears in BTC in advance instead of waiting longer for a larger payment.
