Some Mt. Gox creditors says they’ve received repayments via PayPal

Nearly a decade after Mt. Gox’s dramatic collapse, some of the defunct crypto exchange’s customers claim they have received their long-awaited repayments.

Posts to the Mt. Gox creditor subreddit, as well as posts in a dedicated Telegram channel, indicate that certain payments have indeed gone out — in the form of the Japanese yen, to creditors who appear to have chosen to receive such payments via PayPal.

“I got money!!” one user wrote on Reddit. “Got our PayPal!! Woohoo!” wrote another.

Yet the process appears to have run into some early trouble. Posts on Reddit indicate that a few creditors received double payments via PayPal. One user posted an email they said was from the Mt Gox trustee, requesting a return of the extra payment. 

In September, the Mt. Gox rehabilitation trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi had told creditors that the repayment deadline had been pushed back a year, from Oct. 31, 2023, to Oct. 31, 2024. 

But last month, Kobayashi wrote in a message to creditors that some cash repayments would be issued before the end of the year. 

“The Rehabilitation Trustee plans to commence repayment to creditors shortly. The Rehabilitation Trustee is making efforts to commence repayments in cash within the 2023 calendar year,” Kobayashi’s November missive explained. “However, due to the large number of rehabilitation creditors who will receive repayment, the varying types of repayments, the different preparation and processing times required to make the repayment, repayments will continue into 2024.”

Mt. Gox failed in early 2014, triggering a global regulatory response and, closer to home, a nearly decade-long bankruptcy and corporate rehabilitation process. The exchange was the target of a string of hacks between 2011 and 2014. 

Earlier this year, a pair of Russian nationals were indicted by the US government for laundering funds stolen from Mt. Gox.

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