For several months, affected customers have been able to have their say on how the funds should be distributed.
Victims who lost Bitcoin in the notorious Mt. Gox hack have one day left to vote on a rehabilitation plan that could see them receive a payout.
The doomed exchange collapsed in 2014 after being hacked on multiple occasions — and a total of 850,000 BTC was taken from the trading platform’s coffers.
Approximately 200,000 BTC was later recovered, and for several months, affected customers have been able to have their say on how the funds should be distributed.
There has been a rallying cry for all victims to cast a ballot. The rehabilitation plan will only pass if 50% of all account owners vote yes — and it is being assumed that those who don’t vote are against the proposal.
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Why This Matters
It’s been more than seven years since the Mt. Gox hack, which remains the biggest and most audacious theft of Bitcoin in the cryptocurrency’s 12-year history.
At the time, the 850,000 BTC stolen was worth approximately $473 million, equating to a per-coin price of about $556.
Even though only 200,000 BTC has been recovered, this now has a cash value of $11 billion after the digital asset was propelled by bull runs in 2017 and 2021 — 23 times more than what the entire crypto stash was worth at the time.
The rehabilitation plan could create a number of crypto millionaires overnight — and there are concerns about what this could potentially mean for Bitcoin’s price.
Some analysts fear that victims could opt to sell their BTC immediately after being compensated, and that this selling pressure could cause the digital asset’s value to fall.
In a message to creditors, the Mt. Gox Legal group said:
“The chance to finally recover something from the Mt. Gox debacle is now, and the way is to approve the civil rehabilitation plan in the ongoing vote.”
A major worry centers on the fact that victims could end up receiving far less if the rehabilitation plan doesn’t pass — meaning Mark Karpeles, who was the exchange’s CEO, would end up trousering a surplus worth billions of dollars.
In a recent interview with Yahoo! Finance, Karpeles suggested that he would continue the fight to compensate creditors if this happened — potentially by taking Mt. Gox out of bankruptcy and distributing assets to account holders directly.
