Mt. Gox has initiated the process of returning 142,000 Bitcoin to its creditors.
Some of these, however, are complaining about access problems to their site.
Bitcoin news: the problems of the creditors of Mt. Gox
The report originates from a post on Reddit in which the user mtgoxinsolvency hypothesizes that the Mt. Gox website may have been attacked.
The official website of the exchange that failed in 2014 is, however, normally accessible.
The site also has a subsection dedicated solely to creditors.
In fact, at this moment, this section of the site is inaccessible, so much so that it does not allow login, and only shows an error message stating that the website is temporarily inactive for maintenance.
However, the Reddit user had pointed out that previously they had received as many as 15 notifications of attempted access to their account on Mt. Gox.
He hypothesized that the site was under attack.
The attack on the Mt. Gox website
If what mtgoxinsolvency reported on Reddit were true, one could indeed imagine a scenario in which the Mt. Gox site was attacked.
The point is that on claims.mtgox.com the creditors of Mt. Gox can enter the data to receive the Bitcoin to which they are entitled.
Mt.Gox went bankrupt in 2014, and of its over 850,000 BTC that it had in custody at the time, it now holds only 139,000. Until a few days ago, it was 142,000.
These 139,000 are about to be returned to creditors, and the return procedure requires each creditor to provide their data for collection to the bankruptcy trustee on claims.mtgox.com.
It is therefore possible to imagine that some hacker tried to enter the creditors’ accounts on claims.mtgox.com to replace the collection data with their own.
In the face of repeated attempts of this type, the site managers might have decided to take it temporarily offline, perhaps to make some changes that block these attacks.
The practice of reimbursement
To all this, two decidedly important details must be added.
The first is that by now all creditors should have sent their data for the collection of the credit in BTC. Even mtgoxinsolvency writes on Reddit that the information related to the beneficiary on the Mt. Gox site can no longer be changed.
Therefore, it seems virtually impossible for the hacker to be able to modify the creditors’ collection data, even if they managed to breach their accounts.
Furthermore, it should be added that refunds will not be made with BTC transfers to non-custodial wallets.
They will all be managed through some centralized exchanges, such as Kraken, which have KYC.
Therefore, not only should hackers not be able to replace the data related to the collection, but even if they managed to do so, they would still not be able to collect the BTC unless they manage to breach the creditors’ accounts on the exchanges they have indicated.
Maybe they were precisely looking for that specific data, namely the account on the exchange on which the creditors have indicated they want to receive the credit in BTC.
The hacker
Obviously, it is not known who the hacker is.
Someone hypothesizes that they may have come into possession of a list of email addresses of Mt. Gox creditors, and that they are simply attempting a brute force attack to try to access their accounts.
It seems in fact that it has already happened in the past.
It is recommended to activate two-factor authentication (2FA), because this makes it extremely difficult for third parties to gain access.
The fact, however, that it seems the hacker neither knows that the data for cashing out on Mt. Gox can no longer be changed, nor that to cash out one must pass identity verification (KYC) on an exchange, suggests that they are not an expert in such matters.
It could therefore be a hacker who is not very familiar with the Mt. Gox case, and who perhaps believes that the refunds will be made to anonymous addresses.
The distribution of Bitcoin from Mt. Gox to creditors
Of the 142,000 BTC that Mt. Gox had until a few days ago, about 3,000 have already been distributed to creditors.
Another 49,000 have already been transferred to the exchanges, so much so that Kraken has sent email notifications to Mt.Gox creditors who indicated this exchange as the platform to receive the refund.
At this moment, there are still 90,000 BTC in the Mt. Gox wallets, which should all be distributed by October 31.
The 49,000 BTC that have already been transferred to the exchanges do not seem to have been distributed to the creditors yet.
The hypothesis is that it will take one or two weeks for the actual distribution to take place.
The impact on the price of BTC
It should be noted that these are neither sales nor liquidations of BTC, but only transfers of BTC from the Mt.Gox wallet to those of the creditors present on the exchanges.
It is not known how many of the BTC that creditors will receive in this way will then be sold on the exchanges themselves, so it is not possible to estimate the impact that this distribution will have on the price of BTC.
Since Mt.Gox had recovered about 200,000 BTC after the theft that forced it to close in 2014, a significant portion must have already been sold in the past.
It should not be forgotten that a part of the reimbursements to creditors occurred in fiat currency, which implies that the failed exchange sold part of its assets to collect fiat currencies to distribute to creditors.
The creditors in fact had two options: either request the reimbursement in fiat currency of an amount more or less equal to the credit calculated in fiat currency at the time of the bankruptcy declaration (February 2014), or in BTC and BCH.
In the end, those who opted for the refund in crypto will receive a higher value, given that in the last 10 years the market value of Bitcoin has increased by 10,000%.
