The two largest creditors of the defunct Mt. Gox exchange have opted for an early payout, choosing to receive their money in BTC as per a recent report.
Bitcoinica, a defunct BTC exchange once based in New Zealand, and the Mt. Gox Investment Fund both went for the early payout, the report states, citing sources familiar with the matter. The two accounts for about 20% of all Mt. Gox claims.
As Bloomberg further notes, this means that the two creditors will receive 90% of what they claim to be owed by the defunct Japanese exchange. In a January communication, the trustee stated that the payout would likely be in September 2023.
The two creditors opted to have most of their claims paid in BTC, the report adds. This removes the need for the trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, to auction off the BTC to repay them. Market experts feared that if the creditors went for the fiat payments, the trustee would have been forced to liquidate billions of dollars worth of BTC, possibly sending it down a cliff amid the wider bear market.
As CoinGeek reported, other creditors have until March 10 to decide between the early payout in September, where they receive a portion of their claims, or seeing out the legal proceedings for the chance for a higher payout.
While waiting for the conclusion of the proceedings has a possible upside, legal experts also warn that there is no guarantee the creditors will receive more money then than they will now. In addition, the creditors may have to wait for several years in a legal case that’s been going on for almost a decade.
Mt. Gox, once the largest BTC exchange, went down in 2014 after about 850,000 bitcoins were stolen. To date, no one has been held accountable for the hack, with ex-CEO Mark Karpeles serving some time in prison for fraud.
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