Mt. Gox was a Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange. It shut down in February 2014 after reporting that about 850,000 BTC had disappeared. On 16 October 2026 its rehabilitation trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, announced that the court had allowed him to move the deadline for creditor repayments from 31 October 2026 to 31 October 2027 (Japan Standard Time). Most creditors who completed the required steps have already been paid. Others are still waiting, either because they never finished the paperwork or because something went wrong during payment.
Time left until 31 October 2026 · end of day UTC
The latest development: a fourth deadline extension (16 October 2026)
The trustee's notice of 16 October 2026 says three types of repayment are "largely completed" for creditors who finished the procedures and hit no problems: the Base Repayment, the Early Lump-Sum Repayment and the Intermediate Repayment. It gives two reasons for the extension:
- "many rehabilitation creditors" have not completed the procedures needed to receive payment;
- "a considerable number" have not been paid "due to various reasons, such as issues arising during the Repayments process."
The notice gives no count of unpaid creditors and no figure for the bitcoin the estate still holds.
This is the fourth one-year extension. The trustee's site lists earlier moves from 31 October 2023 to 2024 (notice of 21 September 2023), from 2024 to 2025 (10 October 2024) and from 2025 to 2026 (27 October 2025).
What this means for a creditor
The notice directs inquiries to the MTGOX Online Rehabilitation Claim Filing System at claims.mtgox.com, through the FAQ inquiry form. The trustee has also warned about fake websites and emails pretending to be MTGOX or the trustee (notice of 29 October 2025). Use only the official domain.
Repayment timeline from the trustee's notices
| Date | Event (per mtgox.com notices) |
|---|---|
| 28 Feb 2014 | MtGox Co., Ltd. applies to the Tokyo District Court for civil rehabilitation |
| 24 Apr 2014 | Bankruptcy proceedings begin |
| 24 Nov 2017 | Some creditors petition for civil rehabilitation |
| 22 Jun 2018 | The court orders civil rehabilitation and stays the bankruptcy; Kobayashi is appointed trustee |
| 20 Oct 2021 | The rehabilitation plan is confirmed; the order becomes final and binding on 16 Nov 2021 |
| 24 Jun 2024 | The trustee says repayments in bitcoin and bitcoin cash will be made "from the beginning of July 2024" through cryptocurrency exchanges |
| 16 Oct 2026 | The repayment deadline moves to 31 Oct 2027 |
Why the switch to civil rehabilitation mattered: in the trustee's 2018 FAQ, bankruptcy converts non-monetary claims into money at their value when proceedings start. Civil rehabilitation does not convert them. That is why creditors with bitcoin claims could be repaid in bitcoin and bitcoin cash rather than in yen valued at 2014 prices, with the trustee distributing through designated exchanges.
Four moves of the Mt. Gox repayment deadline
Step through each time the trustee pushed back the deadline for creditor repayments, from 2023 to the current date of 31 October 2027.
- 21 Sep 2023First extension: 2023 to 2024confirmed
The trustee's notice moves the repayment deadline from 31 October 2023 to 31 October 2024.
- 24 Jun 2024Payments in kind announcedconfirmed
The trustee says repayments in bitcoin and bitcoin cash will be made from the beginning of July 2024 through cryptocurrency exchanges.
- 10 Oct 2024Second extension: 2024 to 2025confirmed
The repayment deadline moves from 31 October 2024 to 31 October 2025.
- 27 Oct 2025Third extension: 2025 to 2026confirmed
The repayment deadline moves from 31 October 2025 to 31 October 2026.
- 16 Oct 2026Fourth extension: 2026 to 2027confirmed
With court permission, the trustee moves the deadline to 31 October 2027 (Japan Standard Time). He says many creditors have not completed the procedures and a considerable number have not been paid because of issues during the repayments process.
- 31 Oct 2027Current repayment deadlineannounced
The new deadline for creditor repayments. The trustee directs inquiries to the FAQ inquiry form at claims.mtgox.com.
This shows only the deadline dates and announcements in the trustee's notices: it cannot tell you whether your own claim has been paid, how many creditors are still unpaid, or how much bitcoin the estate holds.
What happened in 2014
The company's own announcement of 28 February 2014 set out the collapse:
- In early February 2014, "illegal access through the abuse of a bug in the bitcoin system" increased the number of incomplete bitcoin transfers.
- An internal check found that about 750,000 BTC deposited by users and about 100,000 BTC owned by the company had disappeared.
- On 24 February the company found a gap of about JPY 2.8 billion between the cash in its bank accounts and the amount users had deposited.
- The site closed at noon on 25 February (Japan time).
- Reported assets were JPY 3,841,866,163 against current liabilities of JPY 6,501,119,371.
On 20 March 2014 the company said it had found 199,999.99 BTC in an old-format wallet that had been in use before June 2011. With about 2,000 BTC it already held, its balance came to roughly 202,000 BTC. It revised the estimated loss to about 650,000 BTC and noted that the figure could still change.
The malleability explanation was challenged at the time
Mt. Gox blamed transaction malleability. This flaw allowed a transaction's ID to be changed without making the transaction invalid, so a sender could be tricked into thinking a withdrawal had failed and sending it again. In March 2014, ETH Zurich researchers Christian Decker and Roger Wattenhofer studied more than a year of network data. They concluded that "barely 386 bitcoins could have been stolen using malleability attacks from MtGox or from other businesses," and that the company still needed "to explain the whereabouts of 849,600 bitcoins." The Segregated Witness upgrade (BIP 141) later removed signature data from the transaction hash. In the proposal's words, it "fixes the problem of transaction malleability fundamentally."
What US prosecutors allege
- 2017: a US indictment in the Northern District of California alleged that Alexander Vinnik obtained funds from the Mt. Gox hack and laundered them through several exchanges, including one he ran. In 2024 the Justice Department announced that he had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering over his role in operating that exchange from 2011 to 2017.
- 9 June 2023: the Justice Department announced charges against Russian nationals Alexey Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner. They are alleged to have stolen "at least approximately 647,000 bitcoins from Mt. Gox" between September 2011 and at least May 2014, after first getting into the server that held the exchange's wallets. Those charges are allegations and have not been proven in court.
The chief executive's conviction
In March 2019 the Tokyo District Court convicted Mark Karpelès, who ran Mt. Gox after buying it from founder Jed McCaleb in early 2011, of manipulating electronic records. It acquitted him of embezzlement. He received a suspended sentence of two and a half years. Mt. Gox began as a domain McCaleb registered for a Magic: The Gathering card-trading site, which gives the name its letters.
What changed after Mt. Gox
Japan's amended Payment Services Act took effect on 1 April 2017. From then on, only operators registered with a Local Finance Bureau could run a virtual currency exchange service in Japan. According to the Financial Services Agency, registration requires:
- capital of at least JPY 10 million and no negative net assets;
- systems to operate "appropriately and securely";
- customer money and crypto kept separate from the company's own assets.
By the end of September 2017, 11 operators had been registered.
Practical takeaways
- Withdrawals that stall are a warning sign. Mt. Gox reported a rise in incomplete transfers weeks before it shut down.
- Custody is a claim, not ownership. Coins held by a third party become a claim in insolvency. Mt. Gox creditors waited from 2014 to 2024 for the first payments in kind, and some are still waiting in 2026.
- Check segregation rules. Where a regulator requires customer assets to be held separately, as Japan has since 2017, check that the platform you use falls under such a rule.
- Creditors should use only official channels. Inquiries go through claims.mtgox.com. Ignore other sites or emails claiming to speak for the trustee.
