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.
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