Fortress to Redouble Efforts to Purchase Mt. Gox Creditor Claims
Bitcoin traded at around $7,155 in New York on Thursday, up from about $566 in February 2014.
(Bloomberg) -- Fortress Investment Group LLC is redoubling efforts to buy up creditor claims from the defunct Mt. Gox cryptocurrency exchange, albeit at a lower price than in an initial proposal earlier this year.
The private-equity and hedge-fund firm sent letters this month to creditors offering to pay 70% of their account value. The one-page proposal, which Bloomberg News obtained from a person who said they weren’t authorized to speak on the manner, said lawsuits brought recently against the Mt. Gox Estate “threaten to delay and dilute distributions on your claim.”
Based in Japan, Mt. Gox was once the world’s biggest Bitcoin exchange, until it closed in early 2014 after losing the coins of thousands of customers. Thousands of Bitcoins have since been found, and a trustee is working to reimburse creditors. The reimbursement is being delayed by two lawsuits that “are each expected to take 1-2 years for an initial ruling by a judge,” the letter said. “Both litigants would then have an option to appeal, which could take an additional 2-3 years.”
A spokesperson for New York-based Fortress didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
To calculate its offer, Fortress is multiplying the number of Bitcoins an owner lost by 15%, which is the amount currently available for distribution to creditors, and multiplying that by the current price of Bitcoin, which is down from June highs. The offer stands until Dec. 31. Fortress pledges payment within three days of any claim transfer, the letter said.
Fortress was offering $900 per Bitcoin claim. Now the price is about $778 per Bitcoin lost in the Mt. Gox disaster. Bitcoin traded at around $7,155 in New York on Thursday, up from about $566 in February 2014.
To contact the reporter on this story: Olga Kharif in Portland at okharif@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Dave Liedtka, Rita Nazareth
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.