- MtGox victims have received their first payouts, but early reports reveal some recipients receiving double the expected amount
- Despite years of preparations, the trustee has been forced to ask for recipients to send the extra funds back
- Fears of an imminent Bitcoin tsunami are overhyped
The first payouts to MtGox victims have finally arrived nine years and ten months after the exchange collapsed, but it seems that almost a decade of rehearsals hasn’t led to a flawless performance. Shortly after the first reports of payouts being sent to creditors surfaced online it was reported that some recipients were receiving double their expected amount, leading to the trustee to request that they send back the extra funds. The sending out of some claims has led to fears that the 138,000 BTC held by the trustee will soon be flung into the market with gay abandon, but this belies the complexity of handing out such huge repayments, and in a format that the Japanese court has never had to handle in this manner before.
Japanese PayPal Users Get First Payouts
Reports of payouts began surfacing yesterday when members of two creditor communities posted to say that they had received their Japanese yen payouts into their PayPal accounts, but that some had gotten back double what they were expecting:
The confusion doesn’t bode well for further payouts, especially those made in cryptocurrency; if the trustee’s office can’t handle fiat currency payouts properly, how on Earth is it going to handle crypto payouts efficiently? There is the mitigating factor that there are some 24,750 creditors who have claims to process, but these names have been known for around nine years, so the trustee has had plenty of time to get everything in order.
No Bitcoin Tsunami
The trustee announced earlier this year that payouts would start at the end of 2023, but few believed this having seen so many promises broken ever since the exchange collapsed in February 2014, and, while there may have been a clerical error to get the ball rolling, the fact that payouts are starting to trickle out brings hope to the world’s most beleaguered Bitcoiners.
The sending out of fiat payments has led, naturally, to concerns that a tsunami of bitcoin is about to flood the market as the trustee divests himself of the 138,000 BTC currently locked up in his vaults and that is owed to creditors. However, no bitcoin has yet left any of these wallets, and even when they do they will go to exchanges who will have to ratify the payouts and allot them to registrants, a process that they have already said will take weeks:
More mtgox fear spreading. No bitcoin has left the trustee’s wallet, and when it does it will be staggered and the exchanges receiving it will have to process it first. Nothing that takes this long ends up being done in a rush job. https://t.co/Pw5Qpg0W1k pic.twitter.com/5PqqH6q3Ju
— Mark Hunter (@Twentynothing00) December 27, 2023
This means that any fears over a MtGox-related Bitcoin crash are massively overhyped and should not be entertained.
