Creditors of the failed Mt. Gox cryptocurrency exchange are reporting receiving double payments to their PayPal accounts less than a day after the reimbursements began.
Members of the MtGoxInsolvency subreddit group say they have received two transactions of identical amounts in their PayPal accounts. Others report receiving notice from the Mt. Gox trustee requesting the return of the duplicate payment.
Redditor rlycreativename posted a screenshot of its notice:
The defunct cryptocurrency exchange had reportedly begun reimbursing creditors in the waning hours of Christmas nearly a decade after ceasing operations due to a loss of 650,000 to 850,000 bitcoins, the latter representing $36 billion today.
Redditor rpostwvu appears to have been the first to report at approximately 10 p.m. EST on Dec. 25 that it received payment in the form of yen to its PayPal account:
Mt. Gox operated from 2010 to 2014, becoming the world’s largest bitcoin exchange by 2013 as it handled more than 70% of all bitcoin transactions. The Japanese-based exchange abruptly ceased operations in Feb. 2014 after reports of insolvency after an alleged hack of hundreds of thousands of bitcoins beginning as early as 2011.
In September, Mt. Gox rehabilitation trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi informed creditors by email that the defunct exchange would begin repayments this year, and set a complete reimbursement deadline of Oct. 31, 2024.
