Mt. Gox files for bankruptcy protection, blames hackers for company's collapse

Andrew Burton/Getty Images

Mt. Gox files for bankruptcy protection, blames hackers for company's collapse
(Image credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Troubled Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan on Friday. At a press conference in Tokyo, CEO Mark Karpeles blamed his company's implosion on a "weakness in our system" that might have led to a hacking attack and caused clients to have their digital currency stolen. It's estimated that roughly 750,000 customer Bitcoins were taken during this week's attack, along with 100,000 of Mt. Gox's coins, reports The New York Times.

Mt. Gox once accounted for some 80 percent of the world's Bitcoin trading. The possibility of Mt. Gox users ever getting the stolen crypto-currency returned to customers seems somewhat slim, though Karpeles insisted that trading Bitcoins is still a healthy and growing industry, and said he is working on a solution to getting Mt. Gox operational again.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us

Jordan Valinsky is the lead writer for Speed Reads. Before joining The Week, he wrote for New York Observer's tech blog, Betabeat, and tracked the intersection between popular culture and the internet for The Daily Dot. He graduated with a degree in online journalism from Ohio University.