The deadline for the Mt. Gox Bitcoin has been postponed to next year

A few days ago, the bankruptcy trustee of Mt. Gox sent a letter to all creditors of the exchange that failed in 2014, informing them that the deadline for reimbursements in Bitcoin has been changed. 

In reality, part of the reimbursements have already been made, but there are still some missing that should have been completed by October 31, 2024. This deadline has been postponed to October 31, 2025.

The refunds of Bitcoin from Mt. Gox

In the letter, Nobuaki Kobayashi states that, with the exception of some types of reimbursements, the base reimbursement, the early lump-sum reimbursement, and the intermediate reimbursement have largely been completed.

However, this only applies to creditors who have already completed the necessary procedures to receive refunds and who have not encountered any issues during the refund process.

Kobayashi, however, also reveals that many creditors have not yet received their reimbursements because they have not completed the necessary procedures to receive them.

Note that the exchange closed more than ten years ago, and that the procedures for reimbursement started months ago. 

Currently, according to the data from Arkham Intelligence, out of the approximately 142,000 BTC held by the exchange, about 97,000 have already been distributed, but almost 45,000 are still to be distributed, and indeed they are still held in the Mt. Gox wallets.

The first refunds were made in July, and the last ones in August. So it has been two months since any others have been made. 

The problems of the creditori

Kobayashi admits that there have been other problems as well, in addition to not having provided all the data to be able to receive the refunds. 

One of these is identity verification, also because in similar cases one can expect a whole series of illegitimate requests from someone posing as a creditor without perhaps being one. 

The bankruptcy trustee states that it is desirable to make the missing reimbursements to the extent reasonably practicable, thus admitting the fact that some creditors need more time. 

For this reason, he obtained the court’s permission to modify the final deadline, extending it by one year. 

So on one hand there are still many creditors who have not provided all the necessary data to receive the refund, while on the other hand some requests have not been completed due to the lack of all the details. 

The impact on the price of Bitcoin from the Mt. Gox reimbursements

When the news of the start of refunds spread, at the beginning of July, the price of Bitcoin dropped from $63,000 to $54,000.

Given that it was a large sum, released in a few weeks, there was the fear that many of those who had received them would immediately sell them. 

This, however, did not happen, so much so that by mid-July all the losses from the beginning of the month had already been recovered. 

At the beginning of August, however, as soon as this repayment phase ended, the price dropped again, going from almost $70,000 to less than $50,000 in just a few days. In this case, however, already a week later, most of the losses had been recovered with a return above $60,000.

The fact that the current price is perfectly in line with that of the end of June leads to the belief that the negative impact on the price of BTC was mainly due to the news regarding these refunds, and not the refunds themselves. 

What will BTC Holders do?

The point is that those who had lost Bitcoin in 2014, when Mt. Gox closed, if they receive them now with a market value that in the meantime has increased by about 100 times, can easily be induced to keep them for maybe another ten years.

On the other hand, it had been years since the hope of getting something back was lost, and the number of BTC refunded is far lower than the number of BTC owned by users on the exchange at the time of closure. 

In particular, there is a piece of data that highlights how those who received those BTC, returned through other exchanges, largely decided to hold them. 

In fact, in the month of July, the total number of BTC held by exchanges as a reserve dropped from about 2.87 million to 2.76 million, decreasing further in August to 2.72. 

Therefore, despite the Mt. Gox trustee having sent 97,000 BTC to the exchanges as reimbursement to registered creditors, during the same period the number of BTC on the exchanges decreased by 110,000 units. 

It is very likely that the majority of those who received them withdrew them and put them on their own non-custodial wallet. 

For this reason, the decision to postpone the deadline did not have much impact on the price of BTC.