Mt. Gox Email Confirming BTC Addresses Sparks Hope of Repayment

After 10 years of waiting, Mt. Gox creditors might soon be seeing a sliver of their funds being returned to them. Yes, you've read that before on Blockhead but this time it's different... Kind of.

Custodians/victims of Mt. Gox have reportedly been receiving an email confirming their Bitcoin addresses to make repayments.

“The rehabilitation trustee shared your details with the cryptocurrency exchange or the custodian," reads the email sent to Mt. Gox users. "In the future, it is anticipated that the Exchange will accept your subscription of agency receipt indicated on the System to receive repayment in BTC/BCH as your agent."

Some Reddit users even claimed to have received payment. "I just got paid," posted one commenter with an enclosed screenshot. "I'm a three-digit creditor living in Japan."

Mt. Gox, which derived its name from "Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange" as it began as a trading platform for the collectible card game, was responsible for over 70% of Bitcoin transactions at that time. In 2014, the platform suffered a hack in which it lost 850,000 BTC. At the time, its value was $450 million; it's now worth around $33 billion.

The Tokyo-based exchange filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan soon after, leaving some 24,000 creditors in the dark.

In an e-mail circulated on 21 November to creditors, the defunct exchange said its rehabilitation trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, is “making efforts to commence repayments in cash within the 2023 calendar year.”

Kobayashi emphasised, "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."