Mt Gox rehab plan of returning 141,686 BTC gets approved

The Mt Gox Bitcoin rehab plan, which would compensate stolen Bitcoins to victims of the 2014 exchange hack, has been approved by the trustee board.

141,686 Bitcoins will, therefore, be distributed to the victims, who voted in favour of the proposal earlier this year but the date of repayment has still not been defined. Some analysts argue that the Bitcoin lost in Mt Gox is likely to make its way back into exchanges.

The recovery plan was first mooted in January 2021, and was last night given the green light by the board handling the process.

One Trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, came to a deal with former Mt Gox partner CoinLab to initiate the proceedings.

The draft of a plan was filed on February 15 and creditors were asked to vote on a way to distribute around 150,000 Bitcoins to the victims of the infamous attack.

After the end of the voting period, the Tokyo District Court confirmed the reimbursement notice just as Bitcoin was hitting a price of $67,000. At the time of the theft seven years ago, Bitcoin was trading at under $500.

However, there have been some concerns that the rapid distribution of such a large amount of Bitcoin could result in a sell-off.

However, Mindao Yang, a creditor of Mt Gox, said it may not be until 2023 when creditors obtain their funds, and settlements will be made over time, meaning the long-term impact may not be as significant as feared.

Mt Gox saga coming to an end

The Tokyo-based exchange is ready to compensate more than $8.5 billion in Bitcoin holdings (for $60,000 each Bitcoin token) to its rightful owners.

With the distribution of these funds to victims, years after the attack occurred, the Mt Gox saga will finally come to an end.

Twitter cryptocurrency analyst Mr Whale claimed the settlement would trigger a massive Bitcoin plunge of more than 80%.

The Bitcoin price did fall after Mt Gox revealed the news. It dropped to $58.6K but recovered soon above the psychological level of $60k. At the time of writing it was down by 0.70% to $60,284.57 with a volume of $41.11bn.