Eric Wall, a Mt. Gox creditor, has dismissed the rumors that all of the roughly 150,000 BTC sent to creditors would soon be offloaded into an already stressed bear market. He also confirmed that no payouts in crypto would occur in the next three weeks.
In the tweet, Eric clarified that creditors have yet to register their wallet addresses or submit banking details where their assets will be sent to, which would be the first step in getting the repayment plan going. As of now, no official date has been confirmed for the commencement of repayment, he added.
Almost a decade after an attack forced the platform to shut down, Mt. Gox creditors were given the option to choose between bitcoin, cash or Bitcoin Cash to receive repayment. The process could make the frozen crypto assets liquid again, depending on the entitled users’ choices.
Those who chose to receive their repayment in bitcoin are reportedly posing a new selling threat to an already battered market. Even those who opt to get paid in fiat money are risking pressuring the market further as the trustee would supposedly liquidate an equivalent amount of bitcoin to pay out those interested in receiving cash.
Back in November, creditors of the defunct crypto exchange have overwhelmingly approved trustee’s compensation plan, a few weeks after a Tokyo court said there were no grounds for disapproving it.
“Following discussions with the Court and in accordance with the Rehabilitation Plan, the Rehabilitation Trustee plans to set the Assignment, etc. Restriction Reference Period from approximately the end of August this year until all or part of the repayments made as initial repayments is completed for safe and secure Repayments,” the court papaers read.
Mt. Gox went offline in 2014 in the single biggest setback in the history of Bitcoin after 850,000 bitcoins were stolen in a hacking attack. Under suspicious circumstances, the Japanese exchange claimed it had lost track of about 750,000 bitcoins belonging to customers and another 100,000 of its own, but later said it had found 200,000 bitcoins.
Those assets were supposed to be distributed to shareholders as part of the liquidation. This is because the value of creditors’ claims is calculated in the exchange rate between Bitcoin and the Japanese yen on the bankruptcy date in April 2014, instead of current rates.
However, the rehabilitation ruling is not in the financial interest of the shareholders. Mt.Gox has two shareholders, Tibanne and Jed McCaleb. The Tokyo-based exchange is 88 percent owned by Tibanne, of which Karpelès is the sole owner. The remaining 12 percent are held by Mt. Gox’s original creator Jed McCaleb, a San Francisco-based programmer who currently works with Stellar.