Mt. Gox Repayments Pushed Back Two Months, Per New Announcement

The timeline for registering financial details and receiving repayments from Mt. Gox has been extended by two months.

According to the creditor announcement from today, the deadline for the first tranche of repayments has been moved to September 30, and payments will begin on March 10. Creditors have until March 10 to provide their crypto exchange and banking information, and they will have the option to receive their payment in cryptocurrency, fiat currency, or both, which will be deposited into their bank account or crypto exchange.

“The deadline for the Selection and Registration was January 10, 2023 (Japan time) but having obtained the permission of the court, the Rehabilitation Trustee has changed the deadline to March 10, 2023 (Japan time), considering various circumstances such as the progress by rehabilitation creditors in respect of the Selection and Registration.”

Source: https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20230106_announcement_en.pdf

All creditors will receive a base payment and may also be eligible for an early lump sum payment or a different amount at a later date.

Is Kraken responsible for this?

The Block reported that there is speculation among Mt. Gox creditors that the recent extension of the timeline for financial details registration and repayments may be related to Kraken’s decision to leave the Japanese market. Creditors had to choose from a list of exchanges to receive their crypto payments, and Kraken was one of the options. 

However, Kraken announced that it plans to exit the Japanese market in January, which has caused some creditors to experience difficulties getting their crypto exchange details verified in time for the previous deadline. The new deadline may help these creditors to complete the verification process.

It is possible that Kraken’s departure from Japan may cause issues for Japanese creditors who wish to convert their crypto to fiat currency and withdraw the funds to their local bank account. However, it is not clear how significantly this will impact the majority of creditors or repayments.

What was Mt. Gox?

The exchange was the online meeting place for trading BTCs until 2014. It was founded in 2009 as an exchange for trading cards by the Ripple founder Jed McCaleb. After 2009, it quickly became more and more popular for trading BTCs. In 2013, half of the global BTC trading volume settled on the online exchange.

More than 850.000 BTCs were lost in the hack (or inside job, we still don’t know for sure). At that time the damage was half a billion USD, today the stolen goods would be worth a lot more! What has happened so far? Not much, rather nothing at all, until lately. To this day however, people have not being compensated YET. The CEO at the time goes by the name of Mark Karpeles, and the prosecutor originally demanded 10 years in prison. However, since only data manipulation (balance sheet falsification) could be proven, he was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment on probation. Lucky or justified? Unfortunately, this has little meaning for the customer base at that time, since they are still angry about their losses.