Mt. Gox, a Japanese bitcoin exchange that went bankrupt a decade ago after a major hack, is finally ready to pay its creditors. These creditors will receive a major payday as the company will begin distributing around $9 billion in bitcoin, rewarding them for their patience over the years.
In 2011, Mt. Gox lost up to 950,000 bitcoins in a hack, a significant amount considering the value of bitcoin was much lower at the time. Around 140,000 of those bitcoins were later recovered. Today, these recovered bitcoins are worth approximately $9 billion, a huge increase from their original value.
According to a CNBC report, one of the plaintiffs is Gregory Greene of the United States, who filed a class-action lawsuit against Mt. Gox and its former CEO shortly after the platform filed for bankruptcy in February 2014. The account Greene, which held $25,000 worth of bitcoins when the platform froze, is now potentially worth about $2.5 million due to the skyrocketing value of bitcoins. However, it is still unclear how much he and other creditors will receive when payments begin in July.
What was Mt. Gox?
Mt. Gox, short for โMagic: The Gathering Online Exchange,โ was once the worldโs largest bitcoin exchange, handling around 80 percent of all global dollar-for-bitcoin transactions at its peak. The platform shut down in February 2014 after a series of hacks, which Mt. Gox attributed to a bug in the bitcoin system. This bug allowed hackers to siphon bitcoins from usersโ accounts while displaying incomplete transaction messages.
The report suggests that payments will be made in a combination of bitcoin and bitcoin cash, an early offshoot of the original cryptocurrency.
Many of the lead plaintiffs are prominent figures in the Bitcoin world, including early Bitcoin investor Roger Ver, Blockstream co-founders Adam Back and Greg Maxwell, and Bruce Fenton, former CEO of the Bitcoin Foundation.
