Mt. Gox collapse — what creditors were owed and recovered (2014)

Mt. Gox halted bitcoin withdrawals on 7 February 2014, citing transaction malleability, and filed for bankruptcy at the Tokyo District Court on 28 February 2014. Roughly 850,000 BTC were reported missing; about 200,000 were later found in an old wallet, leaving approximately 650,000 lost, worth around 473 million dollars at the time of filing.

The bankruptcy was suspended on 22 June 2018 when the Tokyo District Court ordered the case into civil rehabilitation, a Japanese reorganisation procedure that is neither a bankruptcy nor a US Chapter 11. The conversion was sought precisely because bankruptcy would have frozen creditors' claims at the April 2014 bitcoin price of 50,058 yen per BTC, capping payouts in yen and leaving the appreciated coin surplus to shareholders. Civil rehabilitation permitted repayment in kind.

Kraken, the court-appointed claims agent, reported 24,750 creditors filing claims accepted at 45,609,593,503 yen, about 417 million dollars. In March 2019 the trustee approved claims covering 802,521 BTC, 792,296 BCH and 38.2 million US dollars plus other fiat currencies. Wikipedia records roughly 127,000 creditors overall, a larger figure than the count who filed.

The rehabilitation plan became final and binding on 16 November 2021. Distributions in BTC and BCH began in July 2024 through Kraken and Bitstamp. About 19,500 creditors have been repaid. The trustee still holds roughly 34,700 BTC and extended the repayment deadline to 31 October 2026, the third such extension.