A window for payments to Mt. Gox creditors opened after the deadline for submitting the relevant documents. The period will run until 31 October 2023, according to Nobuaki Kobayashi’s letter.
The process will take some time. The timings for basic, intermediate, and early lump-sum payments may be adjusted with the permission of the Tokyo District Court.
Kobayashi will coordinate payments with financial institutions, including crypto exchanges, which will distribute the funds among creditors.
“For this reason, it will take some time before payments begin,” the trustee warned.
Mt. Gox currently holds 142,000 BTC ($3.9 billion), 143,000 BCH ($17.9 million) and ¥69 billion ($523 million) — about 20% of the hack.
The once-largest bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox collapsed in early 2014. This followed reports of a suspected hack and theft of 800,000 BTC ($480 million at the time).
The civil rehabilitation process was launched in 2018.
In 2020 Kobayashi submitted a plan to reimburse creditors in the Tokyo court, which approved the document. At that time the platform’s wallet held 137,891 BTC.
As previously reported, the Mt. Gox trustee began preparing for compensation payments in July 2022.
Earlier UBS expressed doubts about large risks to Bitcoin arising from client payments by the platform.
Bloomberg noted that the largest creditor of the bankrupt exchange intends to retain the returned coins.