- The Mt. Gox rehabilitation plan has seen great strides being made in the past four weeks
- First the rehabilitation plan was agreed upon, and now Coinlab has accepted the terms
- Where does this leave the Mt. Gox rehabilitation process?
Mt. Gox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi gave victims of the 2014 hack an unexpected Christmas present last year when he announced that the Mt. Gox rehabilitation plan, which has been the subject of perpetual delays since the first deadline was missed in February 2019, had finally been agreed to and was being sent to the Tokyo District Court. This good news was augmented on Friday by news that another major stumbling block had been cleared in the shape of Coinlab’s approval, so where does this leave the Mt. Gox rehabilitation process?
Huge Hurdle Cleared
While December’s news was without the biggest breakthrough in the process in years, it still left two hurdles to clear – Coinlab and creditors. Coinlab, a company that was contracted to handle all of Mt. Gox’s North American services, sued Mt. Gox and then CEO Mark Karpelès in May 2013 for $75 million citing a breach of contract. They then escalated their claim to a scarcely believable $16 billion in February last year.
It came as some relief to Mt. Gox victims last week then when Coinlab agreed with the December rehabilitation plan that would see creditors claiming 90% of the cryptocurrency and cash in Kobayashi’s possession. Given that the coinlab case has been rumbling on for almost eight years, starting even before the Mt. Gox hack, this is a huge development.
Creditors Could Scupper Mt. Gox Rehabilitation Bid
The last barrier then is made up of the creditors. These include all the companies that did business with Mt. Gox and were still owed money from them, from IT developers to banking service providers. It is not clear how much of the remaining funds have been allocated to creditors in the December agreement, but it is likely a fraction of what they are actually owed.
At this point the creditors have two choices – they can either accept the offered payout, knowing they will get it relatively soon, or they can reject the plan and ask for more money, knowing it will likely set the Mt. Gox rehabilitation back months or years.
At this point, almost seven years after Mt. Gox’s collapse, it surely makes more sense for the creditors to get something now rather than prolong the case in the hope of more money down the line in the knowledge that it may never appear.
