The saga has ended – 750,000 BTC ($420 million) of customers’ funds have been stolen from the company in the beginning of February
According to a press conference that has been held in Tokyo, as of today it is finally official – Mt Gox has filed for bankruptcy protection. According to a CNBC report the filing states that the total amount of outstanding debt obligations of the Japanese exchange totals to ¥6.5 billion ($63.6 million). According to official data the company has lost almost all of its virtual currency and allegedly it has happened in the first days of February.
The total number of Mt Gox creditors totals 127,000. Reuters reports that total assets are estimated at ¥3.8 billion ($37.2 million), while the company believes that the total amount of lost customers’ funds are around 750,000 BTC and another 100,000 BTC of its own stash. Once we include liabilities towards customers of the exchange we get to a much bigger figure – at current market prices on Bitstamp, that totals to a much heftier sum – almost half a billion dollars.
Тhe CNBC report cites Angus McFadyen, an associate from international law firm Pinsent Masons that in his opinion the company will disappear. The first in line of the company’s creditors are tax authorities, while Bitcoin investors will be at the bottom of the list. He doesn’t think that there is any likelihood that any of those investors will be compensated considering the dire financial state of the company.
Information that has been released over the newswires for now points to the beginning of February as a turning point in the fortunes of the company – funds have been stolen from Mt Gox through unauthorized access to the company’s servers. In the end one of the main positives for the currency might play out to be its main weakness – according to Bitcoin aficionados it would be virtually impossible to trace who stole the funds.
Could it be an inside job? We are just throwing it in the air for our readers to consider… the Bitcoin community has already been quite rampant towards Mt Gox’s CEO Mark Karpeles. Unfortunately that might be a question to which we will never get an answer.
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