Are repayment delays doing Mt. Gox creditors a favor?
Mt. Gox has pushed back its bitcoin (BTC) repayments deadline yet again, extending the wait for some creditors to more than a decade after the exchange’s collapse.
The latest postponement is the third year in a row that the Rehabilitation Trustee has kept creditors waiting. They now have a new deadline of October 31, 2026.
As to why these repayments won’t be carried out on time, the notice explains that “many rehabilitation creditors… have not completed the necessary procedures.”
It adds, rather unhelpfully, that others’ delays are “due to various reasons, such as issues arising during the Repayments process.”
But looking at BTC’s price chart over that time, the Rehabilitation Trustee may actually be doing creditors a favor.
Read more: Mt. Gox to start creditor repayments next month, asks users to ‘wait a while’
Repay or delay?
Creditors approved a rehabilitation plan on October 20, 2021. At the time, BTC was at around $65,000 on its way to the 2021 cycle top of approximately $69,000 the following month.
By the original deadline on 31 October, 2023, BTC was trading at just $35,000, almost half its previous all-time-high.
The previous month, creditors were informed that the deadline would be extended by exactly one year to give enough time to collect and verify creditor details.
Shortly afterward, BTC’s pumped, reaching a new high within four months.
Some repayments began in 2024, with crypto markets spooked whenever blockchain analysts detected movements in Mt. Gox wallets.
Three weeks before the 2024 deadline, creditors received notice of a further postponement, citing the same reasons as today. Almost immediately afterward, BTC began to climb again, pumping from around $65,000 on its way to break $100,000 within weeks.
Today, BTC sits at $115,000, just three weeks off its all-time-high of $126,000.
In delaying repayments once again, is the trustee doing Mt. Gox creditors a favor by HODLing on their behalf? Or is it denying them their chance to sell before the current cycle is over?
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