In a report published on Yahoo News’s Japan section, Mt.Gox has recovered nearly 200,000 BTC from a “lost” wallet dating back to 2011. The company’s lawyers claim that Mt.Gox found the wallet on March 7 during an internal investigation following their declaration of bankruptcy on Feb. 28.
Few details about the recovery have been released, but if true this would dramatically reshape the potential for former Mt.Gox customers to recover at least some of their lost funds. Mt.Gox is still on the hook for the remaining 650,000 coins, currently valued at $324,500,000.
As expected, speculation on the bitcoin Reddit was rampant about what the discovery actually reflects about the Mt.Gox sitatuation, and casts further doubt on the narrative that hackers taking advantage of the transaction malleability glitch in the site’s code were responsible for the loss of user funds.
The discovery of the funds appears to solve another Mt.Gox mystery, the movement of 180k coins through Mt.Gox associated accounts on March 7.