The following is a press release from Grant Thornton, as liquidators for Cryptopia. Cryptopia was an international cryptocurrency exchange based in Christchurch, and founded in 2014. It failed in 2019.
The liquidators of Cryptopia are pleased to announce a significant milestone in the ongoing liquidation process. Over the past two days, more than 10,000 verified account holders of Bitcoin and Dogecoin have received their first cryptocurrency distributions.
Within the last 48 hours, over NZ$400 million in cryptocurrency has been returned on-chain.
Since the launch of the Cryptopia claims portal four years ago, liquidators have been working to identify users so their assets could be returned in-specie and in line with Justice Gendall’s decision in March 2020. This complex process also involved rebuilding the hacked cryptocurrency exchange and reconciling millions of transactions from nearly 960,000 users.
Following this first distribution, liquidators will continue to follow the approved process. This includes giving notice of cut-off dates before distributing the remaining Bitcoin, Dogecoin and all other cryptocurrencies of sufficient value to account holders.
There may be an additional top-up distribution to account holders, allowing them to receive up to 100% of their holdings using “unclaimed holdings”, from those account holders who have not registered in the claims portal after the cut-off dates. The liquidators will give account holders notice of the soft cut-off date in the coming days.
The liquidators encourage all remaining account holders to register on the claims portal and complete the necessary steps to become eligible for future distributions. Further distributions for newly verified users are planned for the New Year.
The liquidators would also like to thank all account holders for their continued patience and cooperation as they work to return assets to all eligible account holders.
As this is an ongoing process, the liquidators are unavailable to make any further comments at this time.
5 Comments
I'm not against Bitcoin speculation, congratulations on people's profits. However I don't think it should be considered an investment. Anyone holding/planning to buy Bitcoin should watch the following. Bitcoin has been compromised.
This could have been easily avoided if a proper regulatory environment existed. I very much doubt that Cryptopia could have been an entity if customer crypto assets had reserve requirements by law. For ex, Japanese crypto exchanges need 1:1 backing for customer assets. NZ retail banks pale in comparison.
Anyway, full credit to those behind Cryptopia for helping liquidators trace and recover the assets. They potentially could have more this difficult for the liquidators but it appears they have been cooperative.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.