Mt. Gox Repayments Tied To 2014 Hack Hit Technical Snag As Some Creditors Receive Double Payouts

Some creditors of defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox are receiving double payments to their PayPal accounts after reimbursements commenced. Mt. Gox has admitted the error through email and is demanding the duplicate payment be returned.

Some Mt.Gox Creditors Get Double BTC

Infamously hacked crypto exchange Mt.Gox has started making bankruptcy-related creditor repayments via PayPal. A Reddit user on the Mt. Gox insolvency subreddit going by the name Mat Philips revealed that he got 30,283 JPY ($212) in his PayPal account for a claim of 0.125 in bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). According to his claim form, Phillips is supposed to receive a sum of 106,502 JPY ($747), so he questioned whether additional payments would be made.

Mt.Gox has also found itself at the center of a technical and potentially legal conundrum after accidentally paying settlement funds twice. Several Reddit users reported receiving double payments from Mt.Gox, alongside a request to send the extra payment back.

These users received an email from Mt. Gox Rehabilitation Trustee saying that “due to a system issue, the transfer of money to you was inadvertently made twice”. Creditors are not “authorized to receive the second transfer and are legally obligated to return the above amount to the Rehabilitation Trustee.” The Trustee reportedly demanded the extra payment be refunded “immediately”. 

The Mt.Gox Saga

Launched in 2010, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox garnered popularity and became the biggest bitcoin exchange by 2013. The erstwhile dominant exchange suffered a major hack in 2014, which led to 850,000 bitcoin (BTC) — now worth roughly $36 billion — being drained. 

The hack left around 24,000 creditors in its wake, many of whom have been enthusiastically anticipating the resolution of their claims for nearly a decade.

The exchange ultimately managed to recover 142,000 BTC, 143,000 BCH ($30 million), and 69 billion Japanese yen ($465 million), which it has been planning to distribute to creditors.

In June this year, the U.S. Department of Justice charged two Russian men — Alexey Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner — with criminal acts related to the hack of Mt. Gox.

Some analysts had cautioned that the Mt.Gox repayments could trigger an increase in BTC’s active supply, leading to a price correction. The premise was that creditors would swiftly liquidate their holdings, having waited for years, adding to the existing supply.