Thursday, July 07, 2022

I Can't Decide if the Problem is "Scam" or "Japan"

As many of you may remember, a long time ago in a galaxy far away, one of the earliest/biggest crypto exchanges, MtGox, got hacked and went bankrupt.

For the last several years, I've received periodic instructions on how to receive a settlement of some portion of, IIRC, the 2 or 3 Bitcoins I had stored there at the time.

Every time this comes around, it is a "do the hokey pokey" routine with a bunch of complex stuff, like uploading photos of government-issued ID, taking selfies from various angles of myself holding said ID and a piece of paper with "MtGox" and the date on it, etc.

And when you try to comply with these instructions, count on getting site errors at least two or three times with every form submission. Get an "authentication code." Use the "authentication code" to upload the docs/selfies so that you can get a "creditor code." On and on, as difficult and silly as humanly possible.

I don't know if this is just a scam to discourage as many creditors as possible from claiming their settlement, or if it's due to features in Japanese bankruptcy law.

I've received small settlements in several US class action suits, and all I ever had to give them was my name and a claim (sometimes with e.g. a receipt for evidence) that I belonged to the class being settled with.

MtGox had my account, associated with my email address. It shouldn't be too damn difficult to ask me for either 1) a crypto address to send a settlement in BTC to or 2) a mailing address to send a check to.

No comments: