Remember Mt. Gox? The Japanese Bitcoin exchange online marketplace where people could buy and sell Bitcoin? As PC Mag reports, at one point, it was considered the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world… that is, before it went bankrupt a decade ago in 2014 after it lost 950,000 Bitcoin due to a hack in 2011.
That meant many people lost a lot of money, which if you were one of them, it undoubtedly made you very unhappy, to say the least. Well, here we are, 10 years later, and now it sounds like many of victims will get that cash back, plus some.
After the 2011 hack, the company was able to recover roughly 140,000 coins, which at the time wasn’t much. Thanks to Bitcoin’s growth; however, those coins are now worth an astounding $9 billion. That $9 billion will now be returned to many of the investors who lost money during the exchange’s bankruptcy.
Bitcoin is currently worth 10,000% more than it was at the time of the loss. At the time, a single coin was trading for around $600. Now, that same coin is worth $60,000. It is unknown how much investors will receive individually.
According to CNBC, one of the claimants in the class action lawsuit against the company, Gregory Greene, said that at the time of the bankruptcy, his account included $25,000 in frozen Bitcoin. That Same amount of Bitcoin today would be worth $2.5 million. That’s a pretty substantial windfall.
The site also notes that many account holders have sold off their claims over the past decade, so the number of folks collecting now is likely smaller than in 2014.
Distributions to the site’s 20,000 creditors will begin next month and will be sent in a mixture of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
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