Mt. Gox Trustee: Creditors Will Soon Receive Decisions Over Rehabilitation Claims

Nobuaki Kobayashi, trustee of the now-defunct Bitcoin (BTC) exchange Mt. Gox, has announced he has concluded the processing of creditors’ rehabilitation claims and that they will be notified of the results within days. The announcement was published in an English translation on March 19.

As previously reported, roughly 24,000 creditors are thought to have been affected by Mt. Gox’s 2011 hack and subsequent collapse in early 2014, which resulted in the loss of 850,000 BTC valued at roughly $460 million at the time.

Tokyo attorney Nobuaki Kobayashi, who was appointed to act as civil rehabilitation trustee to manage Mt. Gox’s bankruptcy estate funds, has notified the public that:

“On March 15, 2019, the Rehabilitation Trustee approved or disapproved rehabilitation claims regarding MTGOX Bitcoin exchange users’ rights to make claims against MTGOX for return of cryptocurrency and/or cash [...] and submitted to the Tokyo District Court a statement of approval or disapproval.”

While an exact date for the notification and eventual prospective reimbursement is not given, the announcement outlines procedural details as to how creditors can find out the fate of their claims, according to the respective mechanisms that they used for their submission.

In fall 2018, Kobayashi had published a statement disclosing that he had liquidated almost 26 billion yen (about $230 million) in Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) over four months as of early March 2018.

These liquidations — which earned Kobayashi notoriety as “Tokyo’s Bitcoin Whale” for their allegedly adverse effect on markets — were formally halted when civil rehabilitation proceedings began in June 2018.

This month, former CEO of Mt. Gox Mark Karpeles received a suspended two and a half years jail sentence after being found guilty of tampering with financial records.

Karpeles was found guilty of mixing his personal finances with those of the exchange in order to conceal the platform’s losses to hackers. Karpeles was, however, acquitted of embezzlement charges, and will not serve the sentence unless he commits another offence within four years.

Also this month, a United States court denied Karpeles’ motion to stay a separate lawsuit, which accuses him of personal liability for investors’ losses, in light of the ongoing rehabilitation proceedings in Japan.

Controversial crypto figure Brock Pierce is meanwhile spearheading a “GoxRising” movement, claiming he can reboot the trading platform and expedite compensation for Mr. Gox’s creditors. Karpeles has scorned Pierce’s claims and alleged rights to relaunch the platform.