- Mt. Gox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi has applied for an extension to the rehabilitation submission deadline
- The deadline to agree on how to pay back the remaining Mt. Gox funds to creditors has already been delayed by over a year
- Creditors have so far been unable to come to an agreement on how to repay what is left after the 2014 hack
Nobuaki Kobayashi, the trustee appointed to look after the remaining Mt. Gox funds that are to be handed back to former customers, has applied for a four and a half-month extension to the rehabilitation plan submission deadline. In a posting on the Mt. Gox website, Kobayashi states that there are “matters that require closer examination with regard to the rehabilitation plan”, and has therefore asked the Tokyo District Court, which is overseeing the case, to extend the submission deadline to October 15.
Deadline Already Extended by Over a Year
The Mt. Gox submission deadline has already been extended twice, following previous rehabilitation proposals being rejected by creditors. In March the Tokyo District Court ordered the submission deadline be delayed until July 1, with Kobayashi’s request to delay arriving with the court on June 30.
The rehabilitation of the Mt. Gox money, which is in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and yen, has been plagued with delays and complications ever since Kobayashi was appointed trustee in early 2014. Initially investors were expected to receive the fiat value of their holdings at the time of the theft, or a percentage of it, which required Kobayahsi to start selling the remaining holdings. This he began to do, with some accusing him of crashing the market in the process.
Mt. Gox Now a Civil Rehabilitation Case
The case eventually moved from a bankruptcy case to a civil rehabilitation case in 2018, which allowed for more flexibility in the repayment process. Kobayashi put forward a series of recommendations in late 2018, including that rehabilitation be made in cryptocurrency on a pro-rata basis, with an initial deadline of February 2019.
However, these proposals are yet to receive universal approval among all creditors, causing further delays in the repayment process – if Kobayashi’s request to delay is approved, the new October deadline would mark 18 months since the first deadline imposed by the court.
If no agreement is signed by the October deadline then the case will rumble into 2021, with the 10th anniversary of the Mt. Gox hack looming large in the background, which would only add more pressure to those working to come up with a resolution.
