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Connecting the Community Mt. Gox customers may see funds returned this year
by cityam
ALMOST a decade on from losing their investments, customers of collapsed crypto exchange Mt. Gox could see some of their funds returned by the end of the year.
Mt. Gox was a Tokyo-based exchange which launched in 2010only a year after the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was created. By 2014 it was handling almost three-quarters of global Bitcoin transactions.
However, a whirlwind of revelations about its role in the loss of hundreds of millions of US dollars in Bitcoin saw operations shut down in February 2014. Trading was suspended, the website and exchange were closed, and Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors. More than 200,000 Bitcoin have been found since liquidation proceedings began in April 2014, but many more remain unaccounted for.
At the time, company chiefs said nearly 750,000 Bitcoin held by customers disappeared along with 100,000 of Mt. Gox's own holdings, amounting to more than seven per cent of Bitcoin in circulation in 2014 when a single Bitcoin was worth around $62. In November 2021, Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $67,566.
Nine years ago, Mt. Gox blamed hackers and mounted a search for the lost digital assets, saying "The company believes there is a high possibility that the Bitcoins were stolen".
On March 14 2019, Mt. Gox's CEOFrench entrepreneur Mark Karpelès was found guilty by the Tokyo District Court of falsifying data to inflate Mt. Gox’s holdings by $33.5 million. He was acquitted on several other charges - including aggravated breach of trust and embezzlementbased on the court's belief that Karpelès had acted without ill intent.
He was sentenced to 30 months in prison, suspended for four years, meaning he will serve no time behind bars for his role in the Mt. Gox scandal if he can make it to this coming Tuesday without committing any additional offences. Even more immediate than Tuesday for the customers who lost out almost a decade ago comes a significant way-marker in their attempted recovery of losses - tomorrow's dead-
