Mt. Gox customers who lost all their crypto holdings with the popular crypto exchange platform are finally getting their money back, and then some. On July 5, 2024, a rehabilitation trustee announced in a letter that the first tranche of repayments to its creditors had begun and that funds were now flowing toward the designated exchanges and into customers’ wallets.
Crypto exchange Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy in 2014 when a flaw in its system allowed hackers to plunder almost all of its crypto holdings—worth around $400 million at that time and now valued at around $45 billion. Almost all victims were left with nothing in their Mt. Gox holdings, and they all had to go through a myriad of loopholes and red tape just to try to get their money back.
However, Mt. Gox recovered 140,000 of the nearly 950,000 Bitcoins the exchange lost. One Bitcoin is currently valued at $57,248.50 at the time of writing, which amounts to between $8 and $9 billion, depending on Bitcoin’s trading price — more than enough to repay the value lost during the heist.
Those who waited out the convoluted bankruptcy proceedings are finally enjoying the fruits of their sufferings, as the company’s estate is now distributing the recovered coins. Although only 15% of the lost Bitcoin were recovered since Mt. Gox’s closure, the over 10,000% jump in the value of this crypto from 2014 to 2024 means that many customers are getting more than the original US dollar value they had in their wallets at the time of the loss.
Despite the news that they would soon benefit from the $9 billion payback, many customers were still skeptical because of the trauma that they had gone through over the years. However, this has been partly alleviated as the company started the first payout tranche. One Swedish customer who lost around $2,000 now expects to get back $70,000. While this is nowhere near the value he would have if he still had all of his coins, this is still a 3,500% increase from the initial value in 2014, thoroughly beating inflation and turning his lost funds into an anticipated massive investment.
