Mt. Gox, the cryptocurrency exchange that suffered a loss of 850,000 Bitcoin in investor funds in 2014, has announced that it will begin repaying its defunct users. The rehabilitation trustee of Mt. Gox will start processing repayments in Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) starting in July 2024, as stated in a written note issued by the exchange on June 24.
The trustee has once again appealed to the users for patience, explaining that the order of the payments will be determined by the respective cryptocurrency exchange. Approximately 127,000 creditors of Mt. Gox are owed more than $9.4 billion worth of Bitcoin. These creditors have been waiting for over 10 years to recover their funds after the exchange’s collapse in 2014 due to multiple unnoticed hacks.
Mt. Gox’s repayment plans have been highly anticipated, with users eagerly awaiting reimbursement for their lost BTC for over a decade. In May, Mt. Gox transferred 141,686 BTC worth $9.62 billion into a new wallet called “1Jbez” from several other cold wallets associated with the exchange. This marked the first movement of funds from the collapsed exchange in over five years.
Following these reports, Mt. Gox’s rehabilitation trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, confirmed that the consolidation is part of the exchange’s plans to begin repaying creditors. However, he did not specify when the repayments would commence. In a May 28 announcement, Kobayashi stated:
“The Rise and Fall of a Cryptocurrency Giant. Source: Cointelegraph”
Mt. Gox was one of the earliest cryptocurrency exchanges, responsible for facilitating over 70% of all trades within the blockchain ecosystem. The exchange went offline in 2014 after a security breach resulted in the loss of over 850,000 BTC in user funds, valued at over $51.9 billion. The current price of Bitcoin is above $61,100.
In February 2014, shortly after Mt. Gox went offline, the price of Bitcoin dropped to a local low of $420. The exchange was reportedly hacked six times between 2011 and 2014.
Despite the announcement from Mt. Gox’s rehabilitation trustee, there is a possibility of further delays in the repayment deadline, which was initially set for October 31, 2023. The current deadline was established in September 2023.
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