Mt. Gox History: The Hack, the Collapse and the Long Road to Repayment

Last Updated: October 29, 2026

Quick Answer: Mt. Gox was a Tokyo bitcoin exchange that handled most of the world’s bitcoin trading in 2013 and collapsed in February 2014, saying about 850,000 BTC were missing; it later found about 200,000 BTC in an old wallet. Its estate entered civil rehabilitation in 2018, and the court-appointed trustee began repaying creditors in bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in July 2024. On October 16, 2026, the trustee moved the repayment deadline to October 31, 2027, and wallets attributed to the estate still held about 34,400 BTC as of October 20, according to Arkham Intelligence data cited by Cointelegraph. ## Key Takeaways

• Mt. Gox handled more than 70% of global bitcoin trades in 2013, according to Wired and The Wall Street Journal
• It halted withdrawals on February 7, 2014, and reported about 850,000 BTC missing; about 200,000 BTC were found weeks later
• The Tokyo bankruptcy case became a civil rehabilitation on June 22, 2018, allowing repayment in coins
• Repayments in BTC and BCH started in early July 2024; the deadline has been changed six times since January 2023 and now stands at October 31, 2027
• Arkham data show about 34,400 BTC in estate wallets on October 20, 2026, about 24% of the 141,686 BTC the trustee reported holding in 2018

What Was Mt. Gox?

The programmer Jed McCaleb bought the domain mtgox.com in January 2007, short for “Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange,” as a site for trading game cards, according to TechCrunch and The Wall Street Journal. In July 2010 he relaunched it as an exchange for buying and selling bitcoin, and in March 2011 he sold it to Mark Karpeles, a French developer living in Japan.

In 2013 Mt. Gox handled more than 70% of the world’s bitcoin trades, according to reports at the time by Wired and The Wall Street Journal. It also had problems that year: US authorities seized about $5 million from accounts linked to its US subsidiary, according to TechCrunch, and it suspended US dollar withdrawals for about two weeks.

The 2011 Hack

On June 19, 2011, an attacker using an auditor’s compromised account placed a flood of fake sell orders, and the nominal bitcoin price on Mt. Gox briefly fell to one cent. A copy of the user database, with hashed passwords, leaked around the same time, according to Ars Technica and Mt. Gox’s statements at the time.

The larger theft started later, unseen. In June 2023, the US Department of Justice charged two Russian nationals, alleging that from about September 2011 they gained unauthorized access to the server holding Mt. Gox’s cryptocurrency wallets and that the scheme caused “the theft of at least approximately 647,000 bitcoins” through at least May 2014. The DOJ release notes that an indictment is only an allegation and that defendants are presumed innocent. In April 2015, the Tokyo security firm WizSec had reached a similar conclusion: that most or all of the missing coins were taken from Mt. Gox’s hot wallet starting in late 2011.

The 2014 Collapse

Mt. Gox halted all bitcoin withdrawals on February 7, 2014, according to Bloomberg. On February 24 it suspended trading, and its website went offline hours later.

On February 28, 2014, Mt. Gox filed for protection from creditors in Tokyo, reporting that about 850,000 BTC were missing: about 750,000 belonging to customers and about 100,000 of its own, valued at about $473 million at the time, according to Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. At bitcoin’s closing price of about $80,800 on October 27, 2026, 850,000 BTC would be worth about $68.7 billion.

On March 20, 2014, Mt. Gox said it had found 199,999.99 BTC in an old wallet, reducing the missing total to about 650,000 BTC. In April, it abandoned its attempt to rebuild, and the Tokyo District Court opened bankruptcy proceedings on April 24, 2014, according to the Associated Press.

From Bankruptcy to Civil Rehabilitation

Under Japanese bankruptcy rules, creditors’ bitcoin claims were fixed in yen at the 2014 price, so bitcoin’s later rise made the estate’s coins worth far more than the claims, and the surplus could in principle have gone to Mt. Gox’s shareholders, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2017.

On November 24, 2017, a group of creditors petitioned the court to switch the case to civil rehabilitation, which allows repayment in kind. Bitcoin Cash, created by a fork of the Bitcoin network in August 2017, added a second asset to the estate. Before the switch, the trustee sold part of the estate’s coins. Its March 2018 report shows sales of about 35,841 BTC and 34,008 BCH for about 43 billion yen, and its September 2018 report shows a further 24,658 BTC and 25,331 BCH sold between March 7 and June 22, 2018, for about 26 billion yen, about 69 billion yen in all. In total, that is about 60,499 BTC and 59,339 BCH.

On June 22, 2018, the Tokyo District Court ordered the start of civil rehabilitation proceedings and appointed Nobuaki Kobayashi, a lawyer, as rehabilitation trustee, according to the trustee’s commencement notice. Creditors had until October 22, 2018, to file claims. As of September 21, 2018, the estate held about 141,686 BTC and 142,846 BCH, plus about 69.7 billion yen in cash.

Creditors approved the rehabilitation plan in October 2021, with about 99% in favor, according to Bloomberg, and the court’s confirmation order became final and binding on November 16, 2021, according to the trustee.

How Mt. Gox Repayments Work

The plan provides three types of repayment, named in the trustee’s notices: a base repayment, an optional early lump-sum repayment and an intermediate repayment. Creditors had to choose a repayment method and register payee details on the trustee’s online system by April 6, 2023. Reports in early 2023, citing Bloomberg, said the largest creditor had chosen the early lump-sum option, described as a single payment of about 90% of a creditor’s recoverable claim in place of later distributions. Creditors could be paid in cash through banks or fund transfer providers, or in BTC and BCH through designated cryptocurrency exchanges.

Yen payments to creditors were reported from late 2023. The trustee said on June 24, 2024 that repayments in BTC and BCH would begin in early July, and on July 5, 2024 that the first of them had been made through some of the designated exchanges. The notices do not name the exchanges or give amounts. According to The Block, Bitbank and SBI VC Trade received their allocations first; by July 16, 2024, Kraken, Bitstamp and BitGo had not yet received theirs.

After further notices in July and August 2024, the trustee said on March 27, 2025 that, following repayments made between January and March 2025, more than 19,500 creditors had been repaid through exchanges. The same notice said the trustee was also repaying some creditors in cash from the sale of BTC and BCH, with details to be announced separately.

Repayment Deadline Extensions

The deadline for the base, early lump-sum and intermediate repayments has been changed six times since January 2023, each time with the court’s permission:

In the October 16, 2026 notice, the trustee said repayments had largely been completed for creditors who finished the required steps without problems, except for certain types of repayment. It gave two reasons for the extension: many creditors have not completed the procedures needed to be paid, and others have not been paid because of problems during the repayment process. The notice does not say how many creditors remain unpaid or how much remains to be distributed.

How Much Has Been Distributed and How Much Remains

The trustee has not published a running total of BTC or BCH distributed, so the best public guide is on-chain data from Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain analytics firm:

On these figures, about 107,000 BTC, or about 76% of the 2018 holdings, have left the estate’s wallets, much of it in transfers that Arkham and news reports linked to exchanges handling repayments. The remaining 34,400 BTC were worth about $2.8 billion at the October 27, 2026 close. On June 2, 2026, Arkham saw 10,306 BTC move from Mt. Gox cold wallets to a new address; The Block reported that it was unclear whether the coins were for repayments. We found no reliable current figure for the estate’s BCH: the trustee reported 142,846 BCH in 2018, and Kraken’s July 2024 distributions included BCH, according to The Block.

How the Market Reacted to Mt. Gox Distributions

Large Mt. Gox wallet movements have sometimes coincided with price weakness, but many other factors move bitcoin at the same time. The CoinMarketCap prices below show what happened on those dates, not that Mt. Gox caused it.

• May 28, 2024: Arkham reported the estate’s first large movement in about five years, starting with at least 42,830 BTC, according to The Block.
• Early July 2024: bitcoin closed at about $62,850 on July 1 and fell to an intraday low of about $53,700 on July 5, the day the trustee announced the first repayments, a drop of about 14.5%. Reports at the time also pointed to sales of seized bitcoin by German authorities. Bitcoin ended July about 3% above its July 1 close.
• July 16, 2024: more than 48,641 BTC moved to an address that Arkham said was most likely associated with Kraken. Bitcoin fell from about $65,000 to about $63,000 in the hours around the transfers, then recovered, according to The Block.
• June 2, 2026: on the day of the 10,306 BTC transfer, bitcoin closed about 6.5% lower, and by June 5 it was about 15% below its June 1 close.

For the latest market moves, see our Bitcoin news today page, and for model forecasts, our Bitcoin price prediction.

Mt. Gox Court Cases: Karpeles, Vinnik and the 2023 Charges

Mark Karpeles, the former chief executive, was arrested in Tokyo in August 2015 and spent nearly a year in detention before trial, according to the Associated Press. Prosecutors sought 10 years in prison. On March 15, 2019, the Tokyo District Court found him guilty of manipulating electronic data and acquitted him of embezzlement and breach of trust, according to AP and The Block. He received a sentence of two years and six months, suspended for four years, so he did not go to prison. He was not on trial for the disappearance of the bitcoins, The Block noted. In June 2020, a Japanese high court, the Tokyo High Court, upheld the verdict, according to AP; Karpeles has said he is innocent.

Alexander Vinnik, who operated the BTC-e exchange, was arrested in Greece on July 25, 2017. A US indictment announced the next day alleged that he received funds from the Mt. Gox hack and laundered them through several exchanges, including BTC-e, according to the DOJ release. After his extradition to the United States, he pleaded guilty on May 3, 2024, to conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with operating BTC-e, according to the Justice Department. The Justice Department’s announcement of the plea does not mention Mt. Gox. In February 2025, the United States freed him in exchange for the release of a detained American teacher by Russia, according to the Associated Press.

The 2023 charges against two Russian nationals over the theft are allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

Lessons for Exchange Users Today

• Coins on an exchange are a claim, not coins you control. When Mt. Gox failed, its customers became creditors in a court process that has lasted more than 12 years. Our crypto wallets guide and list of self-custodial wallets explain how to hold your own keys.
• Ask for proof of reserves and liabilities. Mt. Gox’s losses went unnoticed for years, according to US prosecutors and WizSec, and customers had no independent way to check its balances against deposits. Some exchanges now publish proof-of-reserves reports; the most useful ones also cover liabilities and are checked by an outside firm.
• Watch for withdrawal problems. Mt. Gox paused dollar withdrawals in 2013 and bitcoin withdrawals three weeks before it failed.
• Beware of fake “Mt. Gox” sites. The trustee has warned repeatedly about fraudulent websites and emails impersonating Mt. Gox and the trustee. Its October 2025 notice says it uses only three websites, mtgox.com, claims.mtgox.com and material.mtgox.com, and sends email only from the noandt.com, nagashima.com and mtgox.com domains. Check any message or site that claims to come from the trustee against these addresses before acting on it.
• Check rumors against the source. Mt. Gox wallet movements are often reported as imminent selling. Our guide on how to verify crypto news and rumors explains how to check claims against primary sources such as trustee notices.

Mt. Gox Timeline

Data sources: notices and reports of the Mt. Gox rehabilitation trustee (mtgox.com), US Department of Justice press releases, Arkham Intelligence data as reported by The Block and Cointelegraph, CoinMarketCap (BTC prices), and reporting by the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, TechCrunch and Ars Technica, as of October 28, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened to Mt. Gox?
Mt. Gox, once the largest Bitcoin exchange, halted withdrawals in February 2014 and filed for protection in Tokyo after reporting about 850,000 BTC missing. The Tokyo District Court opened bankruptcy proceedings in April 2014 and switched the case to civil rehabilitation in June 2018. A court-appointed trustee now manages the remaining assets and has been repaying creditors in cash, bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash since 2023 and 2024.

How many bitcoins were lost in the Mt. Gox hack?
Mt. Gox reported about 850,000 BTC missing in February 2014, about 750,000 of them belonging to customers. Weeks later it found 199,999.99 BTC in an old wallet, cutting the shortfall to about 650,000 BTC. US prosecutors allege that at least about 647,000 bitcoins were stolen from 2011 onward. At late October 2026 prices, 850,000 BTC would be worth about $68.7 billion.

When will Mt. Gox creditors be repaid?
The trustee says repayments are largely complete for creditors who finished the required steps without problems. In an October 16, 2026 notice, it moved the deadline for the base, early lump-sum and intermediate repayments to October 31, 2027, with the court’s permission, because many creditors have not completed procedures and others ran into problems. It gave no date for paying the remaining creditors.

Did Mt. Gox creditors get paid?
Many did. Cash payments were reported from late 2023, and repayments in bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash began on July 5, 2024, through designated exchanges, with Japan’s Bitbank and SBI VC Trade paying out first, according to The Block. By March 2025, the trustee said over 19,500 creditors had been repaid through exchanges. Some creditors are still waiting, which is why the deadline has been extended to October 2027.

Who was behind the Mt. Gox hack?
No court has ruled on who stole the coins, as far as we could find. In 2023, US prosecutors charged two Russian nationals, alleging they gained access to Mt. Gox’s wallet server from 2011 and caused the theft of at least about 647,000 bitcoins; the charges are allegations. A 2017 indictment also alleged that BTC-e operator Alexander Vinnik laundered funds from the hack. His 2024 guilty plea concerned BTC-e.

Is Mt. Gox still selling bitcoin?
Mt. Gox no longer operates as an exchange. Its trustee still controls wallets holding about 34,400 BTC, according to Arkham Intelligence data from October 20, 2026. The trustee does not announce when or where it sells, but its March 2025 notice said it was also repaying some creditors in cash from the sale of BTC and BCH. Large wallet movements have mostly been transfers to exchanges handling repayments.

What happened to the Mt. Gox CEO?
Former chief executive Mark Karpeles was arrested in 2015 and spent nearly a year in detention before trial. In March 2019, the Tokyo District Court convicted him of manipulating electronic data but acquitted him of embezzlement and breach of trust. His sentence of two and a half years was suspended for four years, so he did not go to prison. A higher court upheld the verdict in 2020.

Nothing in this article is financial or legal advice. Creditors should rely only on notices published at mtgox.com.