In an announcement of its website, MtGox has made public that it has found 200,000 bitcoins of the 850,000 that it had been alleged to be lost. The 200,000 bitcoins were in what were referred to as “certain old-format wallets” which weren’t expected to be holding bitcoins. According to MtGox, the bitcoins were found on March 7th and moved to other offline wallets.
The transfer of a large sum of bitcoins on the 7th, coincides with what was a historical transfer made on the same day of 180,000 bitcoins that were previously sitting in the same wallet for multiple years. At the time, speculation was that MtGox coins may have been the source of the transfer, due to previously recognizable addresses where the 180,000 bitcoins came from being identified to have been controlled by the Exchange . While not addressing the previous transfer, the timing collaborates that previous funds are indeed the one’s found by MtGox.
In terms of returning customer deposits, MtGox didn’t provide any updates, other than stating that the courts where they had filed for Bankruptcy protection were made aware of the finding and currently, 650,000 bitcoins continue to be lost. As such, despite the find, customers will continue to need to wait until a court judgment is decided to remove to freezing of MtGox assets. Beyond the Japanese courts, what is less certain is how the current news will effect MtGox’s Chapter 15 Bankruptcy filing in the US. According to documents which were filed with the court on the 10th on March, they make no mention of the found bitcoins, referring only to the original 850,000 amount, of which 750,000 was from clients and an additional 100,000 owned by the company.
