I guess many newbies have forgotten about this incident and are ready to do it again!

Mt.Gox, once the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, was hacked in 2014 and 850,000 Bitcoins (worth about $460 million at the time) were stolen. Now, 10 years later, compensation is gradually being paid.

After several postponements and lawsuits, the Mt. Gox theft has finally entered the compensation phase, and its creditors are expected to receive the first repayments by the end of this year. In the past 10 years, the soaring price of Bitcoin has also forced Mt. Gox creditors to receive a considerable amount of "unexpected income" after years of "passive lock-up".

Mt. Gox expects to pay creditors 142,000 bitcoins by the end of this year

According to the latest data released by Mt.Gox, the Bitcoin balance of the Mt.Gox liquidation trustee address is 137,890. It is also expected that by October this year, Mt.Gox will pay a total of 142,000 Bitcoins, 143,000 BCH and 69 billion yen (about US$510 million) to creditors.

Will it cause BTC to crash?

Although the compensation that Mt. Gox creditors can receive is very different in terms of currency, the value of Bitcoin has increased tenfold in the past 10 years and is currently near its historical high. Once the more than 140,000 BTC in total are returned to investors, it may cause short-term selling pressure on the market and bring great selling pressure to Bitcoin.

Mt.Gox Incident Review

In 2014, Mt.Gox, the world's largest exchange that once accounted for 70% of Bitcoin trading volume, was exposed to hacker attacks. A total of 100,000 Bitcoins and 750,000 Bitcoins of users were stolen (200,000 Bitcoins were later recovered and about 60,000 Bitcoins were sold successively). User assets were "vanished" overnight, and Mt.Gox filed for bankruptcy three days later. Recalling this "Mentougou incident", many investors still have lingering fears.

Since the bankruptcy, the bankruptcy proceedings have continued to seek compensation methods for users affected by the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, but the bankruptcy trustee hopes to compensate these users' losses through the Bitcoin owned by the exchange, rather than compensating with the fiat currency of equal value corresponding to the Bitcoin at the time. Therefore, after 10 years, the compensation case has progressed slowly.

It was not until October 2022 that Mt. Gox announced that it would open registration for creditors' claims, with 140,000 bitcoins waiting to be delivered for repayment; the Mt. Gox bankruptcy trustee then announced in November last year that it planned to pay the first cash compensation to creditors starting in 2023, and expected to continue paying in 2024; in January of this year, Mt. Gox announced that it would begin unlocking bitcoins to repay creditors.