Cryptopia’s Liquidator Retrieved $7.2M but Can‘t Return It to the Users

December 12, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The liquidator of the ceased to exist New Zealand cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia has managed to retrieve $7.2 million over the past six months after the platform’s alleged loss of $16 million due to a hacker attack in January, but the process of returning funds to their rightful owners is fraught with a number of problems.

Grant Thornton liquidator reports that in total, from May to November, they restored $10.9 million, including $5 million from a third-party trust fund, $4.4 million from the sale of 344 Bitcoins and other Cryptopia assets, plus $200,000 from the sale of assets such as furniture and equipment from Cryptopia’s office.

The costs associated with the liquidation process are $3.7 million, including payments for pre-emptive creditors, salaries, legal costs and commissions. As a result, the company has $7,164,835 left, which could potentially be transferred to users.

The company says it is working on this issue, adding:

“We are working to reconcile the accounts of over 900,000 active customers, many holding multiple crypto-assets, millions of transactions and potentially over 900 different crypto-assets.”

Thus, it will be extremely difficult to establish the amount of payments due to each client. The process is also hindered by the fact that clients did not have individual accounts, and all their assets were stored in a single wallet. At the same time, the exchange itself has never verified the data in the client base with the assets at its disposal.

In addition, legal issues need to be addressed before the allocation of Grant Thornton assets. The company appealed to the Supreme Court of New Zealand to obtain information on the legal status of cryptocurrencies in the country. The liquidator plans to inform about the decision after the hearing in February, and it should release the next full report in May 2020.

Author: Marko Vidrih