What Happens When a Crypto Exchange Goes Bankrupt? How FTX, Mt.Gox and Celsius Claims Worked and How Much Users Got Back

When an exchange collapses, the most common question is “Can I get my coins back?” The answer is usually this: you do not get the original coins back; your account balance becomes a claim against the exchange. In most cases it is converted to US dollars at coin prices on the day of the bankruptcy filing and paid out in rounds only after the court approves a reorganization plan. In all three of FTX, Mt.Gox and Celsius, more than a year and a half passed between the bankruptcy filing and the first distribution.

The short version: FTX users got back 105% to 120% in US dollar terms, but BTC counted for only US$16,871 on the petition date. By my calculation, an FTX.com customer claim for 1 BTC, with each payout used to buy BTC back, comes to only about 0.19 BTC. Mt.Gox is the opposite: it repays in BTC, but the BTC available for distribution is less than 20% of what was lost. Below are the timelines, claims processes and scam warnings for all four cases. All data was checked on 12 October 2026.

This article is a summary of information and not investment or legal advice. Bankruptcy progress, recovery percentages and deadlines change, so the figures in the tables hold only for the dates and sources shown. For your own claim, go by the official claims portal and court documents, and consult a lawyer if needed. The figures converted into coins are my own calculations, not official numbers.

What happens to your assets when an exchange collapses

Whether the coins on an exchange are yours depends on the terms of service

After an exchange files for bankruptcy, the court first has to decide whether users’ coins are part of the “bankruptcy estate”. If they are, users share in pro rata distributions alongside the other creditors. If they are not, users can in theory get them back as they are. The outcome depends on what the terms of service say:

• Celsius: on 4 January 2023, the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that assets in Earn accounts belonged to Celsius’s bankruptcy estate, because the terms of service stated that ownership had passed to Celsius (Morrison Foerster summary). Earn accounted for about 77% of the platform’s assets, about US$4.2 billion at the time of the filing.
• FTX: the FTX.com terms of service said that “title to your digital assets shall at all times remain with you”, and users relied on this to argue that their coins were not part of the bankruptcy estate (Bloomberg Law). But customer funds had already been misused and the shortfall was large, so in the end customers were still paid based on US dollar value at the petition date.

Terms that say the assets “remain with you” still do not guarantee you get the original coins back: once an exchange has commingled and moved customer assets, there are simply not enough coins on the books to repay everyone. Coins held on an exchange are, in practice, a debt the exchange owes you. That is my own conclusion from these cases.

Claims are usually converted to US dollars at petition-date prices

Most US bankruptcy cases value claims at prices on the petition date. FTX’s petition date was 11 November 2022, and the conversion prices proposed by the debtors were BTC US$16,871, ETH US$1,258 and SOL US$16 (Cointelegraph). However much prices rose after that, the claims did not rise with them, and they would not have fallen if prices had dropped. Celsius claims were likewise valued at prices on its July 2022 petition date (CoinTracker’s worked example).

Mt.Gox is the exception. When it entered bankruptcy proceedings in Japan in 2014, claims were also going to be converted to yen at the BTC price of the time, about US$483. On 22 June 2018, the Tokyo District Court switched the proceedings to civil rehabilitation, and creditors who asked to be repaid in BTC could get BTC back (Fortune).

FTX: from the bankruptcy filing to the fifth distribution

From the bankruptcy filing to the first distribution took 830 days, and to the fifth distribution 1,358 days.

Cumulative recovery by claim class

The table below shows the cumulative distribution percentages published in the official press releases, based on US dollar value at the petition date (FTX notes that actual percentages may differ slightly due to rounding):

A dash means the sources I found did not give the figure. The second-round percentages come from the official press release as reported by Bitcoin Magazine, the third from Blockworks, and the fourth and fifth from FTX’s official press releases. Convenience claims received the full 120% in one go in the first distribution in February 2025.

Current status: the fifth press release only says that later record dates and payment dates “will be announced”. As of 12 October 2026, I could not find an officially announced date for a sixth distribution. To take part in later distributions, you must complete KYC, the tax forms and registration with a distribution service provider before that round’s record date.

Creditors in restricted jurisdictions

In July 2025, the FTX Recovery Trust asked the court to approve a “restricted jurisdiction” procedure covering 49 jurisdictions, including China, Russia and Ukraine: if it were confirmed that distributions could not legally be made there, creditors’ distributions could be forfeited. Claims from these jurisdictions made up about 5% of an estimated US$16 billion in total claims, with China accounting for 82% (The Block). After more than 300 Chinese creditors objected, the trust withdrew the motion on 3 November 2025, but it was withdrawn without prejudice, so it could still be filed again later (The Block).

Mt.Gox: more than ten years of waiting, repaid in BTC

The assets available to the trustee for distribution were about 142,000 BTC, 143,000 BCH and 69 billion yen (CoinMarketCap). About 850,000 BTC were lost at the time, so the BTC available for repayment is about 17% of what was lost (my calculation). Creditors who chose “early lump-sum repayment” receive 90% of the recoverable amount, and media estimates put the recoverable amount at about 21% of original holdings (CryptoSlate, citing CoinDesk).

Current status: the deadline for base repayment, early lump-sum repayment and intermediate repayment is 31 October 2026 (Japan time), the third extension. The trustee says most creditors whose paperwork was in order have already been repaid, and those still waiting mostly have incomplete or problematic paperwork (CoinMarketCap). When I checked the official Mt.Gox website on 12 October 2026, the latest deadline announcement still gave 31 October 2026, with no announcement of a further extension. For any changes around the deadline, go by the official website.

Celsius and Voyager: two lending platforms that collapsed in the same year

For these two cases I found only interim percentages and could not find an officially published final cumulative recovery rate, so I do not give a total. Celsius’s fourth distribution excludes the convenience class, custody account claims and de minimis claims.

A 120% payout in US dollars: what is it worth in coins?

FTX’s “105% or 120% back” is measured in US dollar value at the petition date. If you held BTC, ETH or SOL on FTX, the table below converts the payouts into coins. These are my own calculations: each distribution’s US dollars are used to buy back the same coin at Binance’s daily closing price (in USDT) on the payout date. Funds usually arrive 1 to 3 business days later, and trading fees are not included.

Prices used (Binance daily close): on 2025-02-18, BTC 95,672, ETH 2,672, SOL 169.32. The four Class 5A distributions of 72%, 6%, 18% and 9% were paid on 2025-05-30, 2025-09-30, 2026-03-31 and 2026-07-31. Petition-date prices are from Cointelegraph, and the percentages are from the FTX table above.

Put Mt.Gox alongside and the difference between the two ways of valuing claims becomes clear:

The Mt.Gox row in US dollars: 1 BTC returns about 0.19 BTC, which at a BTC price of about US$83,069 on 12 October 2026 is about US$15,700, more than 30 times the 2014 price of about US$483. This is extrapolated from media estimates, not an official figure.

What these two tables show:

• For “more than 100% back”, first ask what it is measured in. FTX paid back more than the full amount in US dollar terms, but on 12 October 2026 BTC was about 4.9 times its petition-date price (US$16,871 versus US$83,069), so in coin terms only about 20% is left.
• People who held stablecoins were affected least. USDT and USDC claims were already close to US$1, so getting back 105% to 120% really is getting back more.
• Payout timing also affects how much you can buy back. Most FTX.com customer payouts arrived in May and September 2025, when BTC was above US$100,000, so they bought back less BTC than the convenience claims. Run the same calculation at 12 October 2026 prices and the result is different again.
• Mt.Gox creditors got back less than 20% in coin terms, yet several dozen times as much in fiat terms. That is because BTC soared during the ten-year wait, not because the bankruptcy was handled well.

How to file a claim after an exchange collapses

Steps the claims processes have in common

Taking FTX as an example, the official steps are (fifth distribution press release):

1. Log in to the official claims portal: for FTX this is claims.ftx.com. Confirm the petition-date balance the system lists; if you disagree, file a dispute before the deadline.
2. Complete KYC identity verification: FTX originally required verification to begin by 3 March 2025. In April, about 392,000 claims that had not completed it were marked as disallowed, and the deadline was later extended to 1 June 2025 (Cointelegraph).
3. Submit the tax forms: fill in the IRS forms that apply to you. Without them, you cannot be paid.
4. Register with a distribution service provider: FTX pays out through BitGo, Kraken or Payoneer, and funds arrive 1 to 3 business days after the payment date. Once you register, you can no longer switch to receiving cash directly from FTX.

For Mt.Gox, creditors register in the trustee’s online filing system, choose to be repaid in BTC, BCH or yen, and are then paid through an exchange the trustee designates. Celsius, depending on the claim class, pays BTC through PayPal, Venmo or Coinbase, or US dollars by wire transfer or cheque. What the three cases share: every step has a deadline, and missing one can shut you out of that round, or even get the whole claim cancelled. Court documents are available on the claims agent’s website, such as Kroll’s FTX case page.

The most common scams during the claims period

Once creditor lists and balances from a collapse leak, they are used for targeted scams. Official warnings include:

• FTX: warns of phishing emails impersonating FTX and websites imitating the claims portal, and stresses that “FTX will never ask you to connect your wallet” (fifth distribution press release). After the 2023 Kroll data leak, users received phishing emails saying they could “start withdrawing FTX funds” (Help Net Security).
• Mt.Gox: the trustee has repeatedly warned on the official website about websites and emails impersonating MTGOX or the trustee, and found websites using the MTGOX name and logo without permission to collect creditors’ information (official Mt.Gox website).
• Celsius: the distribution site warns of fake distribution portals and fake one-time passcodes, and explains that Celsius will not ask for account details by phone, text message or social media (Celsius distribution site).

How to protect yourself: log in only through the web addresses on the official website or in court documents, and do not click links in emails. Never give out your private key or recovery phrase, and do not connect your wallet to any “claim page”. Treat anyone who says they can speed up your payout, who wants an upfront fee to buy your claim, or who offers to recover your losses as a scammer until proven otherwise. For fake recovery firms and other common tactics, see “Crypto Scam Playbooks in the Chinese-Speaking World”.

What you can do before an exchange collapses

Once an exchange has collapsed, there is very little you can do besides wait. What you can control comes before the collapse:

• Keep on an exchange only what you plan to trade and can afford to lose, and keep long-term holdings in a wallet where you hold the private keys yourself. The FTX case shows that even when you get back the full amount in US dollars, you may be left with only about 20% in coin terms, after waiting two to four years.
• Look at proof of reserves, and also at what it cannot prove: a reserve ratio below 100%, or an exchange that stops publishing, both deserve attention. See “How to Check Proof of Reserves”.
• When choosing an exchange, factor in its incident record and how it handled incidents. See “How to Choose a Crypto Exchange in 2026”. For a full account of hacks, withdrawal freezes and collapses over the past decade and more, see “Centralized Exchange Incident Timeline 2014 to 2026”.
• Keep your own records: regularly take screenshots or download your account balances and transaction history. If the balance the claims system lists is wrong, these records are what you will use to dispute it. This is my own advice, not an official requirement.

FAQ

If an exchange goes bankrupt, can I get my coins back?

Usually not the original coins. Once bankruptcy proceedings start, your account balance becomes a claim against the exchange. In most cases it is converted to US dollars at coin prices on the day of the bankruptcy filing, and nothing is paid out until the court approves a reorganization plan. Mt.Gox is the exception: after it switched to civil rehabilitation in 2018, it repaid creditors in BTC and BCH.

How much did FTX users get back?

Measured in US dollar value at the 11 November 2022 bankruptcy filing, by the fifth distribution on 31 July 2026 FTX.com customers (Class 5A) and US customers (Class 5B) had received a cumulative 105%, general unsecured claims 103%, and convenience claims of US$50,000 or less 120%. As of 12 October 2026, FTX had not announced a date for a sixth distribution.

FTX paid back 120%, so why do some people say they lost money?

Because claims were converted to US dollars at petition-date prices, when BTC counted for only US$16,871. By my calculation, a convenience claim for 1 BTC received about US$20,245, which bought back only about 0.21 BTC on the payout date of 18 February 2025. The larger FTX.com customer claims received a cumulative 105%, worth about 0.19 BTC at the prices on each payout date.

When is the Mt.Gox repayment deadline?

The Mt.Gox bankruptcy trustee extended the deadline for base repayment, early lump-sum repayment and intermediate repayment to 31 October 2026 (Japan time). When I checked the official website on 12 October 2026, there was no announcement of a further extension.

What do you need to do to file a claim after an exchange collapses?

Taking FTX as an example: log in to the official claims portal to confirm or dispute your petition-date balance, complete KYC identity verification, submit the tax forms, and then register with one of the official distribution service providers (BitGo, Kraken or Payoneer). In April 2025, FTX marked about 392,000 claims that had not completed KYC as disallowed; the deadline was later extended to 1 June 2025.

How can I tell whether an FTX or Mt.Gox repayment notice is a scam?

FTX says it will never ask you to connect your wallet, and the Mt.Gox trustee has repeatedly warned about impostor websites and emails. Log in only through the portal linked on the official website, do not click links in emails, never give out your private key or recovery phrase, and treat anyone who claims they can recover your funds or speed up your payout as a scammer.