- Some Mt. Gox users reported receiving payments through PayPal
- Mt. Gox, once the largest Bitcoin exchange, collapsed in 2014 leaving hundreds affected
- Victims have been waiting for almost 10 years to receive their funds
After years of waiting, users of the defunct Mt. Gox cryptocurrency exchange would finally be starting to receive their refunds, according to numerous reports.
In a Reddit thread, several users claimed that they had started receiving payments from Mt. Gox through PayPal. “I just got paid,” wrote a user identified as Free-End2543, attaching a screenshot of a notification email from PayPal.
“ I just received my down payment through Paypal!!” wrote another. A user of a Telegram group chat titled “ MtGoxCreditors ” confirmed to news outlet The Block that he received a payment denominated in Japanese yen, dated December 25, from the Mt. Gox administrator at PayPal.
Those affected who requested to receive compensation through PayPal appear to be the first of the group of former users of the exchange to obtain payment since other users who said they had chosen to receive cash in their bank accounts said they had not seen any entry, CoinDesk noted.
The Mt. Gox saga comes to an end
Reports of the first payments come after the trustee overseeing Mt. Gox’s bankruptcy process, Nobuaki Kobayashi, said last month in an email to creditors that he was “making efforts to begin cash payments within of the calendar year 2023.”
The start of the refunds is surprising, given the repeated occasions on which the exchange has postponed the payment schedule since the platform collapsed almost a decade ago. In September, Mt. Gox extended the deadline for rehabilitation creditor payments from October 31, 2023 to October 31, 2024.
The Mt. Gox saga began in 2014, when the now-defunct exchange suffered one of the biggest hacks in crypto history, losing nearly 850,000 bitcoins, worth nearly $35.7 billion at current prices.
The event was followed by accusations of fraud and mismanagement. Mt. Gox, based in Japan, filed for bankruptcy shortly after its collapse, thus initiating statutory civil rehabilitation procedures.
Launched in 2010, it became the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, serving 70% of all global Bitcoin transactions, until it stopped withdrawals and suspended operations in early 2014, leaving users without access to their funds.
The victims then embarked on a battle that now seems to finally come to an end. A rehabilitation proposal, which promised to remunerate around 90% of assets owed to affected clients, had been approved in 2021. Payments were promised to be provided in cryptocurrency, fiat currency, or both, as indicated by each creditor.
Payments will continue in 2024
Payments will likely “ continue until 2024 ” given the large number of rehabilitation creditors, the administrator said in last month’s message.
Mt. Gox payments have been a topic of interest for years in the cryptocurrency space, in part, due to the potential impact they could have on the digital asset market. Despite the large volume of tokens being released, UBS estimated at the beginning of the year that the redemptions will not destabilize the market, although they could have an impact on prices.
