- BitMart, which announced weeks ago that it was shutting down, is now considering a partial restart and payouts to creditors, according to CoinDesk.
- It has hired the law firm White & Case as restructuring counsel, and a detailed roadmap is expected by 9 September.
- We could not find a statement from BitMart or the firm confirming any of this, so it rests on one outlet’s reporting.
Anyone with a balance still stuck on BitMart has spent the last few weeks working on the assumption it was gone. CoinDesk now reports the exchange is weighing a partial restart and payouts to creditors, and has brought in White & Case, with a detailed plan expected by 9 September.
The word that matters in that report is creditor. Once an exchange moves into a restructuring, someone with money on the platform stops being an account holder who can press withdraw and becomes one claim among thousands, waiting on a process that decides who gets paid and how much.
Hiring restructuring lawyers is usually the moment that shift becomes formal. It is also worth being clear that a restart is being considered here, not agreed. Nothing in the reporting says money is coming back.
What hiring restructuring counsel signals
There is a difference between a wind-down and a restructuring, and it is not a technicality.
In a straight wind-down, a company stops trading, sells what it has, and distributes whatever is left. In a restructuring, someone is trying to keep part of the business alive, either because a functioning business is worth more than a dead one or because ongoing revenue is the only realistic route to paying claims. Bringing in a large international firm points at the second path. It does not guarantee it works.
One unglamorous detail sits behind all of this. In most insolvency and restructuring processes, professional fees are paid out of the estate before unsecured creditors receive anything. That is how the system is built rather than a criticism of anyone involved, but it is part of the arithmetic that determines what is left at the end.
Why the word creditor changes your position
Most exchanges hold customer coins in pooled wallets registered to the exchange, not in individually segregated accounts. Whether those coins count as customer property or as assets of the failed company depends on the terms of service, the jurisdiction and, quite often, a judge.
That question has been fought before. In the Celsius case, a US court found that assets in the firm’s Earn accounts belonged to the bankruptcy estate rather than to the customers who deposited them, which turned depositors into unsecured creditors. We do not know how BitMart’s assets are structured, which legal process it might use, or where it would run. None of that is in the reporting we have seen, and it is exactly what the 9 September document would need to answer.
How long these things have historically taken
The public record on failed exchanges is not encouraging on speed. Mt. Gox collapsed in 2014 and creditors did not start receiving distributions until 2024. FTX failed in November 2022, with the first meaningful repayments to smaller creditors reaching people in early 2025, valued in dollars at prices from the date of the bankruptcy filing rather than at the price when the money was returned. Celsius went under in 2022 and began distributions two years later.
Two patterns run through all of them. Payouts arrive in years rather than months, and they are usually partial. The dollar-value point is the one people find hardest afterwards, because a claim frozen at collapse-date prices does not track what the coins did in the meantime.
What a UK customer can do before 9 September
Nothing here is a prediction about whether BitMart pays anyone. It is groundwork that costs an afternoon and is much harder to reconstruct later.
While account access still works, export the full transaction and trade history and take dated screenshots of balances. Save support tickets, emails and any on-screen notices about the shutdown, along with the dates they appeared. If a claims process opens, deadlines are typically strict and the burden of evidencing a balance falls on the claimant.
The other thing worth knowing is what does not apply. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme covers deposits at authorised UK banks and certain investments. It does not cover cryptoassets held on an exchange, and the Financial Ombudsman Service generally cannot take complaints about unregulated cryptoasset activity. There is no UK backstop sitting behind this. Our guide to frozen and delayed withdrawals covers the records worth keeping, and our self-custody guide explains how exchange-held coins differ from coins you hold keys to.
What to watch
The 9 September roadmap, and whether it names an actual legal process and jurisdiction. Until it does, terms like restructuring and creditor payout have no fixed meaning, and the difference between a court-supervised process and an informal company plan is the difference between enforceable rights and a promise.
The other thing is whether BitMart says any of this itself. We found no announcement from the exchange and no public comment from White & Case, which means every figure and date in circulation currently traces back to a single secondary report. That is a thin basis for a story this consequential to the people affected, and it is worth treating as provisional until the company puts its name to it.