Bitcoin’s Past Haunts the Present: Mt. Gox Initiates Repayments After a Decade

• New reports from social media users claim Mt. Gox has begun refunding creditors.
• In the long term, mass withdrawal of Bitcoins from recipients could negatively affect the market. 

The year is closing with good news for some members of the cryptocurrency community who were victims of the Mt. Gox hack. According to reports from some social media users, the victims of the hack, which is still considered one of the biggest hacks in the industry, are receiving their funds after 10 years.

Recall that the victims of the Mt. Gox hacks have seen their Bitcoin (BTC) locked up in the exchange platform since 2014. But within the last few weeks, conversations making rounds on social media hint that they might be getting their Bitcoins back.

Taking to Reddit, a social media platform that is home to a handful of cryptocurrency holders, users of the platforms detailed the situation of things.

In a Reddit page titled “mtgoxinsolvency,” on the 25th of December, users of the platform revealed that Mt. Gox was giving refunds to users in Japanese Yen. The funds are reportedly being sent through PayPal.

One user recently revealed that he has successfully received his funds, and shared details of the transactions in a screenshot. Similarly, another user who stated that he was initially skeptical about the message and thought of it as phishing confirmed that he had also received his funds.

It bears mentioning that back in November, the bankruptcy trustee forwarded messages to Mt. Gox creditors via email. Contained in the email was a message revealing that they were working on refunding users’ locked funds.

The Rise and Fall of Mt. Gox Cryptocurrency Exchange

After its inception into the cryptocurrency ecosystem, Mt. Gox quickly became popular and widely adopted by its Japanese users. The exchange had grown to become the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world in 2014.

While the public perception of the exchange was largely positive, processing more than 70% of transactions, Mt. Gox eventually went bankrupt after recording a massive hack.

The exchange lost 740,000 Bitcoins after the hack, which was valued at a whopping $3 billion in 2014. The exchange initially only recovered 200,000 of the stolen Bitcoins, while hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins are yet to be found.

It was later discovered that the exchange was previously hacked in 2011, which resulted in users losing funds in their hot wallets and cold storage. After the arrest of CEO Mark Karpeles in 2015, a structure was put in place to aid repayment to victims, with a deadline that has been pushed to October 31st, 2024.

As creditors await their funds, it bears mentioning that the entire cryptocurrency market could be affected by the withdrawal of funds when they eventually make their way into the market.