Deadline for compensation payments to clients of cryptocurrency exchange Mt.Gox extended for another year

The deadline for compensating customers of cryptocurrency exchange Mt.Gox has been extended for another year. Users of one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges to face a series of hacker attacks and bankruptcy have been waiting for reimbursement since 2014.

Mt.Gox, one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges, has announced that it will extend the deadline for compensating customers affected by its bankruptcy for another year, according to the exchange's asset manager, Nobuaki Kobayashi, in a letter dated September 21.

With permission from the Tokyo District Court, Kobayashi extended the deadline for basic, early lump sum and interim refunds. The bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange had previously announced that the deadline for paying affected customers would be Oct. 31, 2023, but the deadline has now been pushed back to Oct. 31, 2024.

Mt.Gox was one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, which operated from 2010 until declaring bankruptcy in 2014 after a series of hacking attacks. At its peak, Mt.Gox counted about 70% of the total Bitcoin trading volume. The 2014 hacker attack resulted in the theft of 850,000 bitcoins, which is worth $17.8 billion at current exchange rates.

The exchange's bankruptcy sparked a 7.5-year legal fight, and it wasn't until 2021 that a rehabilitation plan was found for affected users. Since not all of the stolen coins have been recovered, only a portion of the original amount will be reimbursed - approximately 200,000 BTC of the stolen 850,000. The recovered $1.7 billion, 141,000 BTC, and another 142,000 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) coins will be distributed as part of a civil rehabilitation plan to 10,000 customers worldwide.

In June, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two Russian nationals for their involvement in the 2011 hacking attack on Mt.Gox. Alexei Bilyuchenko, 43, and Alexander Werner, 29, are accused of conspiring to launder about 647,000 bitcoins stolen from Mt.Gox and operating the BTC-e exchange from 2011 to 2017. According to court documents, Bilyuchenko and Werner were responsible for stealing cryptocurrency from Mt.Gox, which ultimately led to the exchange's bankruptcy. What was stolen from Mt.Gox allegedly served as the basis for the creation of the BTC-e (later known as WEX) trading platform.

Alexei Bilyuchenko, now using the surname Ivanov, is in Russian pre-trial detention and is accused of being the system administrator of the WEX crypto exchange in 2018, gaining "sole" access and authority to dispose of cryptocurrency on the exchange by blocking access by owners and users. According to the investigation, he then misappropriated various cryptocurrencies.