Liquidators say more than 10,000 verified Bitcoin and Dogecoin account holders have received their first cryptocurrency distributions after the Cryptopia collapse.

“Within the last 48 hours, more than NZ$400 million in cryptocurrency has been returned on-chain,” public accountancy firm Grant Thornton said this morning.

“This complex process also involved rebuilding the hacked cryptocurrency exchange and reconciling millions of transactions from nearly 960,000 users,” Grant Thornton added.

Cryptopia collapsed in 2019. It was allegedly hacked in January that year, leading to the loss of some $30m worth of cryptocurrency held on the exchange, or about 15% of its customers’ total holdings.

Grant Thornton said since the launch of the Cryptopia claims portal four years ago, liquidators had been working to identify users in order to return assets, in line with Justice David Gendall’s decision in 2020.

Bankside Chambers said that decision from Justice Gendall was for what might have been the first fully contested case in the Commonwealth to consider whether cryptocurrencies were property at common law.

“Following this first distribution, liquidators will continue to follow the approved process.

“This includes giving notice of cut-off dates before distributing the remaining Bitcoin, Dogecoin and all other cryptocurrencies of sufficient value to account holders.”

There might be an additional top-up distribution to account holders, letting them receive up to 100% of holdings using “unclaimed holdings” from account holders not yet registered in the claims portal after the cut-off dates, Grant Thornton added

“The liquidators will give account holders notice of the soft cut-off date in the coming days.”

Grant Thornton said it encouraged all remaining account holders to register on the claims portal and take the necessary steps to be eligible for future distributions.

“Further distributions for newly verified users are planned for the new year.”

Grant Thornton expressed gratitude to all account holders for their “patience and co-operation”.