The worry of bankruptcy is one of the main reasons for the massive sell offs on Gox, otherwise people would be hanging onto their BTC. Trying to claim lost BTC in bankruptcy court is almost definitely a lost cause since most governments have not even classified BTC as a real currency.
No, it is not. In a bankruptcy process all known belongings of a company are confiscated, it includes his fapuccino, his Magic The Gathering collection and all the BTC. Then it is used to pay everyone who claim in court to have a credit on a preference order ( taxes and employee credits are always first ).
Nobody here is familiar enough with the Japanese insolvency process to comment with any certainty on exactly how it would proceed.
The issue of whether Bitcoin claims can be treated differently from fiat claims arose in the Bitcoinica liquidation but to my knowledge hasn't been resolved as the liquidator hasn't been able to take possession of the Bitcoinica funds held on MtGox.
We honestly don't know what would be liquidated in a Japanese insolvency. We don't know whether users would be regarded as unsecured creditors. We don't know whether the domain names and trademark would be sold along with all the BTC. We certainly don't know who might have claims superior to those of users.
Generally speaking unsecured creditors rarely benefit from bankruptcy proceedings. The benefit of forcing the issue at this stage would be to stop MtGox owing even more people more money if it is indeed insolvent or forcing it to start paying what it owes if it's not.
