Creditors of the defunct Mt. Gox exchange have overwhelmingly approved a rehabilitation plan to be compensated for the loss of billions of dollars in Bitcoin.
According to an announcement Wednesday by Mt. Gox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi, approximately 99% of creditors affected by the bankruptcy of the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange approved the draft rehabilitation plan originally filed in the Tokyo District Court in February. In addition, it reported that the plaintiffs representing approximately 83% of the total amount of voting rights spoke out in favor of the plan.
The decision follows the Oct. 8 vote of thousands of Mt. Gox users whose losses are estimated at billions of dollars. Kobayashi said the asset allocation probably won’t start for a month after the compensation plan is “final and binding.” He added that creditors should wait to register their bank account details on the website soon to receive payment.
Released in 2010 by programmer Jed McCaleb and later acquired by Karpelès, Mt. Gox was one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world during the early years of cryptocurrencies. A hack in 2011 and the subsequent bankruptcy of the platform in early 2014 affected almost 24,000 creditors, mainly those who had their cryptocurrencies deposited with the exchange.
These events led to the loss of 850,000 bitcoins (BTC), about $ 460 million at the time and $ 56 billion at press time. However, Kobayashi reportedly only has 150,000 bitcoins available to reimburse users.
Japanese courts originally approved a petition for the exchange to begin civil rehabilitation of Mt. Gox creditors in June 2018. This deadline was repeatedly extended for various reasons, but eventually the Tokyo District Court accepted the current draft of the compensation plan in December 2020 and issued an order in February allowing creditors to vote on it.
The Mt. Gox decision came when the remnants of a supervolcano on Kyushu, one of Japan’s main islands, erupted for the first time in more than five years. Although the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has suggested using the country’s volcanoes to mine Bitcoin, it seems that Japan does not have such a system.
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