Mt. Gox update: Investor increases buyout offer to creditors

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An investor looking to buy claims from creditors against the now defunct Mt. Gox crypto exchange has increased its offer, in a revised approach for the claims.

Fortress Investment Group has approached creditors with an offer valued at $1,300 per Bitcoin, approximately 88% of the face value of the outstanding claims against the company, according to Bloomberg.

The new offer is an increase from the 70% initially offered for the claims, made by Fortress Investment Group back in December 2019.

Managing director of Fortress Investment Group, Michael Hourigan, said investors should accept the offer “due to the likely timeline (3 to 5 years) and financial risk of the ongoing litigations.”

The remaining assets of Mt. Gox are currently managed by a court appointed trustee, who is working through claims from creditors still owed money from its collapse in 2014.

Distribution to creditors is still expected to take a number of years, and according to Fortress Investment Group, there is a financial risk to creditors engaging in the court process of distributing its remaining assets.

Mt. Gox collapsed in 2014, as one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges at the time, sending shockwaves throughout the sector. With losses running to $480 million, a number of creditors lost money that remains unrecovered years later.

The exchange collapsed due to a hack, one of the largest in history, which was later attributed to ineffective security and linked to allegations of mismanagement at the firm.

In June 2018, a court in Japan moved Mt. Gox from bankruptcy to rehabilitation, with a court appointed trustee working to administer the company on behalf of its outstanding creditors.

Should investors accept Fortress Investment Group’s offer for their claims, the claims would ultimately be payable to the investment company once the rehabilitation process has been completed.

The offer to walk away with cash now is expected to appeal to some of the creditors still waiting for settlement from the Mt. Gox estate. It remains to be seen whether the revised deal is acceptable to those with outstanding claims against the exchange.