Cryptopia to start accepting refund claims by year-end

Grant Thornton’s auditors expect to launch the process of accepting refund requests from users of the cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia by year-end, according to the company’s report.

Grant Thornton will be able to start payouts after several mandatory steps, one of which is the verification of accounts and user data.

Auditors also have to reconcile balances. The firm noted that the process could be lengthy — Cryptopia had more than 900,000 users and supported up to 900 coins. Grant Thornton do not rule out a further court filing to agree on details.

“As liquidators, we must follow New Zealand law and cannot simply return assets to account holders without completing the necessary KYC procedures,” the statement said.

Where possible, account holders will receive funds in cryptocurrency. Grant Thornton stressed that a detailed reconciliation between the client base and wallet-held assets was not performed.

“We cannot confirm that the balances of accounts will correspond to the actual holdings,” the company added.

As reported in January 2019, the New Zealand cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia told users of “significant losses” due to a hacker attack. According to various estimates, the attackers stole assets worth about $16 million (at the time of the breach).

The platform suspended operations, and in May began the liquidation process. At that time, the Grant Thornton auditors found outstanding debts to creditors of $2.7 million. In the summer of 2019, the company began assessing Cryptopia’s losses.

In early 2020, the liquidators proved that before the hack the exchange did not verify a portion of its users in accordance with anti-money laundering regulations.

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