Mt. Gox Reportedly Starts Repaying Some Creditors Via PayPal

Mt. Gox appears to have started repaying some creditors after the defunct bitcoin exchange’s trustee said last month that it would repay creditors in cash shortly.

In a Reddit thread, several users — who appeared to be creditors of the defunct bitcoin exchange — said that they received their Mt. Gox payments through PayPal today.

“I just got paid,” one user named Free-End2543 wrote, attaching a screenshot of an emailed notification from PayPal.

“I just got my initial payment via Paypal!! I was sure it was a phishing attempt on my email, but nope legit money in JPY,” another user named rpostwvu said, with several others posting similar messages on the social media platform.

One user from a Telegram group chat titled “MtGoxCreditors” confirmed with The Block that they received a Japanese yen-denominated payment — dated Dec. 25 — from the Mt. Gox trustee on PayPal.

Mt. Gox’s rehabilitation trustee did not immediately respond to The Block’s request for comment.

The reported repayments come after the exchange, which collapsed in 2014, said last month in an email to creditors that the rehabilitation trustee is “making efforts to commence repayments in cash within the 2023 calendar year.” Repayments, however, would likely “continue into 2024” given the large number of rehabilitation creditors, the trustee said.

In September, Mt. Gox extended the deadline for rehabilitation creditor repayments from Oct. 31, 2023, to Oct. 31, 2024.

Launched in 2010, the Tokyo-based platform gained popularity and became the largest bitcoin exchange by 2013, servicing 70% of all bitcoin trades worldwide. However, it stopped all withdrawals in early 2014 when the business suspended trading. The site soon went offline, and the company filed for bankruptcy protection after losing over 800,000 bitcoins.