Mt. Gox to start repaying creditors in cash 'shortly' this year, trustee says

Mt. Gox plans to start repaying some creditors “shortly” in cash as stated in an email creditors received today.

The defunct bitcoin exchange, which collapsed in 2014, said in the email that the rehabilitation trustee is “making efforts to commence repayments in cash within the 2023 calendar year.” Repayments, however, will likely “continue into 2024” given the large number of rehabilitation creditors. 

“The specific timing of repayment to individual rehabilitation creditors is undetermined, and therefore, it will not be possible to provide advance notice to each rehabilitation creditor regarding the specific timing of their repayment,” Rehabilitation Trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi said in the email.

Kobayashi noted that creditors may check the repayment status in its claim filing system.

In a separate document sent to creditors today, Kobayashi said that on Nov. 17, the rehabilitation trustee received the redemption of 7 billion yen ($46.9 million) from the trust assets to fund the repayment. The remaining amount of the trust assets following such redemption was 8.8 billion yen, according to the notice.

The latest move appears to mark the first step in repayments for all. In September, Mt. Gox extended the deadline for rehabilitation creditor repayments from Oct. 31, 2023, to Oct. 31, 2024.

Launched in 2010, the Tokyo-based platform gained popularity and became the largest bitcoin exchange by 2013, servicing 70% of all bitcoin trades worldwide. However, it stopped all withdrawals in early 2014 when the business suspended trading. The site soon went offline, and the company filed for bankruptcy protection after losing over 800,000 bitcoins.

Update: Fixed conversion of Yen to USD.