Mt. Gox: all the news on Bitcoin’s original biggest bankruptcy scandal – The Verge

Feds charge two men for the $400 million Bitcoin hack that took down Mt. Gox

2023-06-09T12:37:10-04:00

The US federal government has charged two Russian nationals in connection with the series of hacks that brought down the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange in 2014. In a press release on Friday, the Department of Justice announced it's unsealing a 2019 indictment charging (PDF) Alexey Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner with conspiring to launder 647,000 Bitcoins stolen from the exchange, which was worth around $400 million at the time.

The government is separately charging Bilyuchenko for working with Alexander Vinnik - who the DOJ indicted in 2017 before he was extradited to the US last fall - for operating BTC-e, a now-defunct crypto exchange that se …

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Inside the bizarre upside-down bankruptcy of Mt. Gox

2018-03-22T10:30:03-04:00

Every six months for the past four years, some number of former customers of the defunct Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange have gathered in a small room in a Tokyo courthouse to hear an update from Nobuaki Kobayashi, the stoic Japanese attorney appointed as the trustee for the case.

The number of creditors attending the meeting has dwindled over time: the first one reportedly drew more than 100 people, but the most recent one earlier this month drew fewer than 30, according to the estimates of one attendee.

Mt. Gox has enough assets to pay off its claims with more than $1.4 billion worth of bitcoins left over

That does not mean the Mt. Gox case has …

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Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

2017-07-29T10:00:05-04:00

This week, one of Bitcoin's largest and most notorious coin exchanges was brought down by law enforcement - and police and prosecutors are now beginning to explain why. On Thursday, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against Alexander Vinnik - thought to be the operator, or one of the operators of Bitcoin exchange BTC-e - charging him with 21 counts of money laundering and other related financial crimes. The counts range from operating an unlicensed money transmittal business to a variety of money laundering charges, including laundering associated with ransomware payouts and a theft from the now-defunct Mt Gox exchange. More g …

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Bitcoin exchange chief arrested amid new questions about Mt Gox theft

2017-07-26T14:00:59-04:00

Greek police have arrested one of the central figures in the Bitcoin exchange BTC-e on suspicion of money laundering. Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik was arrested in Greece at the request of US law enforcement, according to a Reuters report. The report cites two sources close to BTC-e who describe Vinnik as "a key person behind the platform." The exchange itself has been down since Tuesday evening.

The BTC-e exchange has long been a favorite of criminals, as its headquarters in Russia places it outside the reach of US and European law enforcement. Recent Google research found that 95 percent of ransomware cash-outs occurred through the BTC …

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Mt. Gox was Bitcoin’s ugliest success story

2015-08-03T13:20:07-04:00

This weekend, Mt. Gox founder Mark Karpeles was arrested in Tokyo, bringing years of confusion and paranoia to an end. Starting in 2010, Karpeles ran the largest and most powerful bitcoin exchange, but the site went offline in February 2014 after it was discovered that $400 million in bitcoin had gone missing from the company's accounts. The official explanation was an obscure "transaction malleability" bug, exploited expertly over the course of years, but insiders have long suspected something more sinister was at work, and this weekend's arrests only lend credence to their suspicions.

As Karpeles heads to jail, his former employees are sp …

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Former Mt. Gox CEO arrested on claims of stolen bitcoins

2015-08-01T10:38:56-04:00

Mark Karpelès, the former CEO of bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, is getting a good look at the inside of a Japanese jail cell. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police confirmed in a statement that detained Karpelès early on Saturday morning at his apartment. The police suspect that he illegally manipulated Mt. Gox's systems to funnel some $1 million into his personal accounts. Under Japanese law, Karpelès can be held without formal charges for up to 23 days. There's no possibility of bail, either.

The arrest is of little consequence for Mt. Gox's former clients, who woke up one day to find that their Bitcoins had disappeared. The company - which was the la …

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Mt. Gox CEO says he isn’t Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts

2015-01-15T22:19:05-05:00

Mark Karpeles, the CEO of stricken Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, has denied any involvement in the online black market Silk Road.

Earlier today in the trial of Ross Ulbricht, accused of running Silk Road under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, a DHS agent said under cross-examination that Karpeles had been a prime suspect in the investigation before attention fell on Ulbricht. Lawyers for the defense implied, if not outright argued, that Karpeles was the real Dread Pirate Roberts and had wanted to artificially inflate the value of Bitcoin.

"I have nothing to do with Silk Road."

But Karpeles has ridiculed the suggestion in an email to Motherboa …

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Mt. Gox abandons rebuilding plans and files for liquidation: WSJ

2014-04-16T01:51:55-04:00

Mt. Gox, the embattled bitcoin exchange that filed for bankruptcy protection last month after losing almost half a billion dollars' worth of customers' virtual funds, is now reportedly asking a Tokyo court for permission to liquidate. According to The Wall Street Journal, the once leading exchange has abandoned its attempt to rebuild the business under bankruptcy protection due to the complexity and unrealistic nature of the plans.

One source says that Mt. Gox is still attempting to find a buyer, which may entitle creditors to a portion of future earnings. But the exchange's decision to file for liquidation after planning rehabilitation mea …

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Mt. Gox finds over $100 million of customers’ missing bitcoins

2014-03-21T10:33:40-04:00

Troubled Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox says that it located nearly a quarter of the around $485 million worth of missing bitcoins that it's been searching for since shutting down its site and filing for bankruptcy protection late last month. Mt. Gox, once Bitcoin's top exchange, previously chalked much of the currency's disappearance up to hackings over the course of several years, leading to some obvious questions about its accounting practices and how this could have gone unnoticed until recently. In finding the bitcoins again, questions about its accounting practices sound just as loudly: it claims to have found the bitcoins - approximately 200 …

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Hackers claim bankrupt Mt. Gox still has customers’ bitcoins

2014-03-10T00:11:04-04:00

Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox lost $400 million worth of bitcoins in February. Its management said the amount was stolen after hackers exploited a transaction bug to divert the funds, but some of Mt. Gox's users are not so sure, suggesting instead that the exchange's owners pocketed the cash. Now, facing silence from those owners about the fate of the money and the methods by which 6 percent of all of the Bitcoin in the world could have been stolen, a group of hackers claims it has broken into the bankrupted Bitcoin exchange's network to get answers.

Forbes reports that the group gained access to the personal blog and Reddit account …

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