Mt. Gox pushes its repayment deadline to 31 October 2027, the fourth one-year delay, with about 34,500 BTC still in its wallets

Mt. Gox creditors who are still waiting for their bitcoin have another year. Nobuaki Kobayashi, the court-appointed rehabilitation trustee of the defunct Tokyo exchange, has moved the Mt. Gox repayment deadline from 31 October 2026 to 31 October 2027 (Japan time), according to a notice dated 16 October 2026 on the estate’s website. The change, made with the court’s permission, covers the Base Repayment, the Early Lump-Sum Repayment and the Intermediate Repayment. It was picked up on 19 October, when CryptoSlate reported it.

This is the fourth one-year extension in a row. The notice gives no count of unpaid creditors, no coin figure and no payout timetable.

What the estate still holds is known only from outside. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham counted 34,504 BTC in wallets it attributes to Mt. Gox on 2 June 2026, as reported by The Block that day. That was worth about $2.43 billion at the time. At the bitcoin price of about $82,320 at 10:36 UTC on 19 October, the same amount would be worth about $2.84 billion, by our own arithmetic. It is a third-party estimate, not a trustee figure, and we found no later balance.

Mt. Gox repayment deadline: what the 16 October notice says

The notice is short and, so far, published only in Japanese on mtgox.com; we saw no English file for this date. Its core is one sentence: the deadline of each of the three repayments has been changed from 31 October 2026 to 31 October 2027, Japan time.

The reason given reads, in our translation, like this. Repayments to creditors who completed the required procedures and ran into no problems are largely complete, except for some types of repayment. But many creditors have still not completed the procedures needed to be repaid. A considerable number of others have not received their money because problems came up during the process. Since it is desirable to pay them as far as is reasonably practicable, the trustee asked the court for more time and got it.

That wording is almost identical to the one used a year ago, with only the years changed. In its October 2025 notice, quoted in English by The Block, the trustee said it was “desirable to make the Repayments to such rehabilitation creditors to the extent reasonably practicable” (The Block, 27 October 2025).

CryptoSlate’s report of 19 October describes the move as coming “following continued administrative and payment-processing difficulties”. That phrase is CryptoSlate’s own summary; it does not appear in the Japanese notice, which speaks only of unfinished procedures and problems during the process.

Which types of repayment are excluded from “largely complete” is not stated. The Japanese text simply sets aside “some types” without naming them.

Four delays in four years

The original deadline set under the rehabilitation plan was 31 October 2023. It has moved by exactly one year every autumn since, each time through a notice on the trustee’s announcements page.

The reasons have shifted with the stage of the process. In 2023, before any bitcoin had been paid out, the trustee said it needed time for creditors to supply information, for its team to check it, and to coordinate with banks, fund-transfer providers and exchanges; Decrypt quoted the letter as saying the trustee “will not be able to complete the repayments above by the deadline”. By 2025 and 2026 the problem had become the tail: creditors who never finished their paperwork, or whose payments hit snags.

This year’s notice came about two weeks before the old deadline. Last year’s arrived on 27 October 2025, four days before it expired.

Why the trustee keeps asking for more time

Most of the bitcoin has left the estate’s wallets, by Arkham’s count. Payouts in BTC and BCH began in early July 2024, after a trustee notice dated 24 June 2024 that told creditors: “Please wait for a while until the repayments are made” (quoted by Kitco). Coins went to creditors through designated exchanges; Decrypt and CryptoSlate name Kraken and Bitstamp. Waves followed in July and August 2024, then from January to March 2025.

By 27 March 2025, the trustee said in a notice that more than 19,500 creditors had been repaid in BTC and BCH. The same notice said some creditors are paid in cash from the sale of BTC and BCH, with details to be announced separately. We found no later detail on any sale.

Against that, Kitco counted more than 127,000 creditor accounts in June 2024. Accounts and creditors are not the same thing, and the trustee has never published how many people are still owed. Its notices only say “many” and “a considerable number”.

Nor does the notice say what those problems are, or how many creditors each one affects.

About 34,500 BTC still sit in Mt. Gox wallets, by Arkham’s count

No trustee balance has been published since repayments began. The figures below come from Arkham, which tracks wallets it links to the estate, including its main cold wallet, as reported at each date.

Between May 2024 and June 2026, that is a drop of about 107,000 BTC, by our own arithmetic. CryptoSlate, in November 2025, put the outflows at about 47,000 BTC in July 2024, 13,000 BTC in August 2024 and 10,000 BTC in April 2025.

Since then Arkham has flagged three large transfers out of the cold wallets. On 2 June 2026 the estate moved 10,306 BTC to a fresh address and 116.3 BTC to a hot wallet, The Block reported, citing Arkham. Similar transfers of roughly 10,000 to 11,500 BTC took place on 24 March 2025 and 17 November 2025. The Block and Decrypt both said it was unclear whether those moves were tied to repayments. For the November 2025 move, CryptoSlate said no coins reached exchange deposit addresses.

The estate also holds Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the coin created by the 2017 fork, which creditors receive alongside BTC. We found no current BCH figure. CryptoSlate put the estate at about 142,000 BTC, 143,000 BCH and about 69 billion yen before repayments started.

What 34,500 BTC means for bitcoin supply

In bitcoin terms, 34,504 BTC is about 0.16% of the 21 million coins that will ever exist. In dollar terms it comes to about $2.84 billion at the 10:36 UTC price.

Earlier Mt. Gox headlines did coincide with price moves. When the trustee announced in June 2024 that repayments would start in early July, bitcoin slid toward $61,000, Decrypt recalled on 27 October 2025. The same article said later delays drew little reaction, though the October 2024 postponement gave bitcoin a brief lift.

After the June 2026 transfer, Markus Levin, co-founder of the decentralised data network XYO, told Decrypt that the roughly 35,000 BTC still to be distributed was “small relative to the liquidity and trading volumes” of the current bitcoin market (Decrypt, 2 June 2026).

We found no sourced market commentary on the 16 October notice itself. Bitcoin traded near $82,320 at 10:36 UTC on 19 October, up 0.24% over 24 hours according to our market snapshot, and we draw no link between that move and the notice.

The notice itself only moves a deadline. It announces no payout wave, no coin sale and no transfer, and it gives no date for the next distribution.

What unpaid creditors need to do before October 2027

For questions, the notice sends creditors to the Mt. Gox claims system at claims.mtgox.com: they should log in and use the contact form behind the FAQ button at the top right of the screen. They can also write without logging in through the FAQ page, but the trustee warns that it then cannot confirm their identity, so a reply may be harder to give. It also says it receives many enquiries and answers may be slow.

Coins have reached creditors through designated exchanges, and CryptoSlate notes that the procedures need coordination between claimants, the trustee and those exchanges. Kraken, one of them, is covered in our Kraken exchange review.

Fake Mt. Gox emails are a known trap

The trustee has published warnings about fraudulent websites and emails using the Mt. Gox name, most recently on 29 October 2025 and earlier on 17 April 2024. A creditor who receives a message offering to speed up a repayment, or asking for a seed phrase or a fee, should go to the claims site by typing its address, not by clicking a link. Our guide to avoiding crypto scams lists the usual patterns.

How Mt. Gox ended up here

Based in Tokyo, Mt. Gox was handling about 70% of all bitcoin trades worldwide by 2013, according to CoinDesk’s explainer on the exchange. It filed in February 2014 after about 850,000 BTC were reported lost to hacks and theft. It applied for civil rehabilitation on 28 February 2014, went into bankruptcy in April 2014, and was moved back into civil rehabilitation on 22 June 2018, according to the trustee’s listing.

Under the rehabilitation plan, confirmed by the Tokyo District Court on 20 October 2021, creditors are repaid largely in kind, in BTC and BCH, or in cash. Decrypt wrote in 2023 that the plan promised to repay about 90% of assets owed.

Newcomers who want the basics of the asset behind all this can start with our guide what is Bitcoin.

What is still unknown, and the dates to watch

Several numbers that matter are not public. The trustee has not said how many creditors are unpaid, how much BTC and BCH their claims represent, or which types of repayment are still open. Nobody outside the estate knows how much of the roughly 34,500 BTC Arkham tracks is set aside for them, whether anything would be left over, or what happens to unclaimed coins after the final deadline. We did not find the plan’s terms on that point in English.

The cash payouts announced in March 2025 are another gap. The trustee said some creditors would be paid from coin sales, but it has not published how much it sold or when.

The next fixed date is 31 October 2027, Japan time. Before that, the signals to watch are new notices on mtgox.com, where the trustee has numbered its repayment updates (the sixth was dated 27 March 2025), and Arkham alerts on the estate’s wallets. The four deadline notices so far were all dated between 21 September and 27 October.