BitMart Proposes Court-Backed Plan Offering Users Payouts or Tokens Tied to Its 2021 Hack

BitMart has published a preliminary plan for repaying its users, more than two months after the crypto exchange began winding down its trading platform.

Under the proposal, released on Wednesday, each user’s account would be turned into a single dollar figure, priced at the weighted average of their tokens’ trading prices from July 26 to a record date that has not yet been set. A court-appointed officer would value those balances, and BitMart said it wants a court to sanction the plan.

Users could then take one of three routes, or mix them:

• An upfront payout. Users who want out now would get a pro rata share of BitMart’s liquid assets, including fiat, stablecoins such as USDC, PYUSD and USDT, and bitcoin, ether and solana.
• A Restitution Token. Each dollar of balance would convert into one token backed by whatever BitMart recovers from its December 2021 hack. BitMart said its latest private forensic reports found “certain pockets of value which are held with certain centralized exchanges.”
• A Continuum Token. This token would trade on decentralized exchanges and be backed by BitMart’s investments, sales of hard-to-sell holdings like private equity stakes and altcoins, and a cut of future profits if BitMart can raise money to restart the business.

BitMart said it is drafting a report estimating the percentage return under each route. Over the next three to four weeks, it plans to consult the 50 users holding the most value on the exchange.

BitMart said the 2021 hack drained about $319.5 million of its reserves, valued as of Dec. 4, 2021, including $164.1 million in ether and $96.5 million in BNB. That left a hole in its balance sheet, though BitMart said profits from the bull market at the time let it keep serving users for years afterward.

The exchange also pointed to a weaker crypto market in 2026 and to wash-trading groups that it said exploited rebate and zero-slippage incentives in its futures business, pushing the company into losses. Since May, social media attacks by those groups set off “a series of panic withdrawals,” BitMart said in its announcement.

The exchange also said it had weighed an unnamed digital asset investor’s public offer to inject $10 million, but wrote in the announcement that the sum “is manifestly insufficient to address the difficulties” it faces.

The exchange plans to take feedback through October, adjust the plan in November, and apply to the courts in December or January. Alvarez & Marsal and White & Case are advising.

BitMart has acknowledged restricting withdrawals, and a group of claimholders organized by distressed-asset firm Echo Base has been weighing whether to push the exchange into involuntary bankruptcy.

Related Listen: How Bitget Is Chasing $388 Million in Stolen Funds After a Zero-Day Hack

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