Cryptopia collapse — what creditors were owed and recovered (2019)

Cryptopia, a Christchurch exchange, was hacked on 14 January 2019 and put into maintenance mode at 7.40pm the same evening. Account holders never traded or withdrew again. Reported losses range from about 24 million to 30 million New Zealand dollars, roughly 10 percent of assets held; up to 900,000 users were affected and about 17,000 accounts were directly hit.

The company went into liquidation on 14 May 2019 by special resolution of its shareholders, with David Ruscoe and Russell Moore of Grant Thornton New Zealand appointed liquidators; recognition was also obtained in the United States. In Ruscoe v Cryptopia, decided by the High Court of New Zealand in April 2020, the court held that cryptocurrency is property capable of being held on trust and that Cryptopia held customer coins on trust for account holders. That ruling placed the coins outside the pool available to ordinary creditors.

Reconciliation was slow because Cryptopia pooled holdings in its own wallets and never reconciled its internal ledger against them; the liquidators effectively rebuilt the exchange to match balances for close to 960,000 users. The first distribution completed in December 2024 returned 400 million New Zealand dollars, about 225 million US dollars, in bitcoin and dogecoin on-chain to more than 10,000 verified account holders.

Separately, 27 unsecured creditors have claimed 22.3 million dollars, which the liquidators say may go unpaid. The final claims cut-off was 30 September 2025; in 2026 the liquidators sought High Court directions on late claims and on using unclaimed holdings for top-ups.