Kraken and Mt. Gox are teaming up to investigate the collapse of the Japanese Bitcoin exchange. The partnership has already been approved by a Tokyo-based bankruptcy court.
The news was recently revealed by Ayako Miyaguchi, who heads Kraken’s operations in Japan. According to Miyaguchi’s statement to The Wall Street Journal, Payward Inc., Kraken’s San Francisco-based operator, will help investigate the collapse of the exchange Mt. Gox, as well as the loss of hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins.
The American company will also manage the process of paying back Mt. Gox’s creditors, which is good news for the former customers of the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange.
The process is expected to move quicker now that there is a Bitcoin-savvy company managing the process. Up to this moment, the process was in the hands of Nobuaki Kobayashi, the trustee appointed by the court that was overseeing Mt. Gox’s liquidation and had no deep knowledge of the Bitcoin system.
Kraken will join the Japanese police in the ongoing investigation that is still trying to figure out how Mt. Gox lost about 850,000 BTC, worth around $500 million when the case became public. The cryptocurrency belongs to 127,000 creditors.
The American Bitcoin exchange was chosen by the Japanese authorities due to its impecable operating history and also because its system has never been hacked.
Kraken agreed to pay 30 million yen to enter this partnership. The money will be given to the Mt. Gox creditors at the end of the liquidation process.
However, and despite the fact that Kraken is providing funds to support Mt. Gox’s liquidation, the company has already guaranteed it won’t rehabilitate the Japanese exchange or buy any of its assets, such as the outstanding debt or the large user database.
Kraken CEO Jesse Powell said that “the outcome of the Mt. Gox bankruptcy proceedings will deeply affect the Bitcoin community as a whole. We’ve decided to volunteer our resources and expertise in an attempt to minimize damage to creditors, restore faith in the Bitcoin community, and demonstrate trusted leadership in the industry”.
