Mt. Gox to return bitcoins that have become 100 times more expensive to customers

Ten years after the bankruptcy of the cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, the company’s creditors will finally receive their long-awaited payouts. Thanks to the significant increase in the value of bitcoin BTC $91,003.48 Bitcoin -0.45% Market capitalization $1.8 trillion VOL. 24 hours $2.22 billion over the past 10 years, many of them can expect astronomical profits.

In 2014, Mt. Gox, which was then the largest crypto exchange that traded bitcoin and national currencies, declared bankruptcy after a series of hacker attacks. About 850,000 bitcoins were stolen. At the time of the exchange’s closure, one bitcoin was worth about $ 600, and the total loss was estimated at about $ 480 million. Today, the price of a bitcoin exceeds $ 60,000, which increases the value of users' frozen assets by dozens and sometimes hundreds of times.

One of the plaintiffs, Gregory Green from Illinois, stated in 2014 that he had $ 25,000 worth of bitcoins in his account. Today, these assets are estimated at $ 2.5 million, which is a 10,000% increase. However, it is not known exactly how much he will receive. According to the court administrator, payments to customers will begin in July, and about 20,000 people will receive compensation, with the total amount of payments amounting to about 140,000 bitcoins (about $ 9 billion at the current exchange rate).

It is expected that most users will choose to receive payments in cryptocurrency rather than fiat money to avoid high capital gains taxes in many jurisdictions. This will allow them to save significant amounts of money by keeping the bitcoins they receive on their wallets.

Analysts from JPMorgan Chase warn that the massive sale of bitcoins by Mt. Gox lenders may lead to a short-term decline in the price of this cryptocurrency in July, but the market is expected to recover in August.