Mt. Gox ’s trustee has asked creditors of the defunct crypto exchange to vote on the draft compensation plan as a Tokyo court said there were no grounds for disapproving it.
In a statement released today, court-appointed Nobuaki Kobayashi said he filed with the Tokyo District Court a revised draft rehabilitation plan on February 15, 2021. This included revisions to schedules for paying back funds for both allowed and disputed claims on February 19, 2021.
The court and an examiner have reviewed the amended plan, and creditors are now called to vote on it after it was approved.
The trustee is reportedly holding 150,000 Bitcoin , worth roughly $7.6 billion at current market prices. More than 20,000 victims are believed to have filed claims for a refund.
“Following the proceedings above, on February 22, 2021, the Tokyo District Court made an order to refer the Draft Rehabilitation Plan to a resolution,” he added.
Mt. Gox’s creditors will be asked to vote on the new plans by March 24, 2021. They can register using the creditor numbers they received in the past.
Civil rehabilitation is not used to resuscitate Mt. Gox business but rather as a more flexible form of bankruptcy. It also allows the trustee to create his own plan instead of following a rigid set of steps under the bankruptcy proceedings. And, most importantly, the bitcoin claims will be able to be revalued – hopefully in bitcoin this time.
Against the Interests of the Shareholders
Mt. Gox went offline in 2014 in the single biggest setback in the history of Bitcoin after 850,000 bitcoins were stolen in a hacking attack. Under suspicious circumstances, the Japanese exchange claimed it had lost track of about 750,000 bitcoins belonging to customers and another 100,000 of its own, but later said it had found 200,000 bitcoins.
Those assets were supposed to be distributed to shareholders as part of the liquidation. This is because the value of creditors’ claims is calculated in the exchange rate between Bitcoin and the Japanese yen on the bankruptcy date in April 2014, instead of current rates.
However, the rehabilitation ruling is not in the financial interest of the shareholders. Mt.Gox has two shareholders, Tibanne and Jed McCaleb. The Tokyo-based exchange is 88 percent owned by Tibanne, of which Karpelès is the sole owner. The remaining 12 percent are held by Mt. Gox’s original creator Jed McCaleb, a San Francisco-based programmer who currently works with Stellar.
