Collapsed crypto exchange Mt. Gox is about to unload $9 billion of coins
A bitcoin exchange that collapsed 10 years ago after being hacked is set to return billions of dollars’ worth of the token to users — and it has investors worried.
A bitcoin exchange that collapsed 10 years ago after being hacked is set to return billions of dollars’ worth of the token to users — and it has investors worried.
In a few days, bankrupt Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox will begin paying back thousands of users almost $9 billion worth of tokens. The platform went under in 2014 following a series of heists that cost it in the range of 650,000 to 950,000 bitcoin, or upward of $58 billion, at current prices.
The payout follows a protracted bankruptcy process that’s involved multiple delays and legal challenges.
On Monday, the court-appointed trustee overseeing the exchange’s bankruptcy proceedings said distributions to the firm’s roughly 20,000 creditors would begin in early July. Disbursements will be in a mix of bitcoin and bitcoin cash, an early offshoot of the original cryptocurrency.
While this is good news for victims of the hack who have spent years waiting to be made whole, the price of bitcoin slid to $59,000 last week, in the crypto market’s second-worst weekly decline of the year.
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