Defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox said it will start distributing assets stolen from clients in a 2014 hack in July 2024, after years of postponed deadlines.
The repayments will be made in bitcoin and bitcoin cash, and could possibly add selling pressure to both markets.
Defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox said Monday it will start to distribute assets stolen from clients in a 2014 hack in the first week of July, years after continually moving deadlines.
“The Rehabilitation Trustee has been preparing to make repayments in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash under the Rehabilitation Plan,” trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi said in a Monday statement posted on the Mt. Gox website.
“The repayments will be made from the beginning of July 2024,” Kobayashi said, adding that due diligence and certain safety steps will be required before the payments go through.
The repayments are largely considered to add selling pressure to bitcoin (BTC) markets as early investors will receive assets at a much higher value than their entries before 2013, making them inclined to sell at least a part of holding, traders said.
Mt. Gox was once the world’s top crypto exchange, handling over 70% of all bitcoin transactions in its early years. In early 2014, hackers attacked the exchange, resulting in the loss of an estimated 740,000 bitcoin ($15 billion at current prices). The hack was the biggest of the many attacks on the exchange in the years 2010-13.
Trustees have put together a repayment plan that has been in the works for several years, and received a deadline of October 2024 from a Tokyo court last year.
In May, the exchange moved over 140,000 BTC, worth around $9 billion, from cold wallets to an unknown address in 13 transactions for the first time, marking the first on-chain wallet movements for the first time in five years.
Bitcoin prices dropped from over $62,300 in early Asian hours to under $62,100 in the minutes following the release of Mt. Gox’s statement, CoinGecko data shows.
Edited by Sheldon Reback.
