More Examples
“The hackers wiped Mt. Gox and the bitcoins are gone!”
“Mt. Gox was an early bitcoin exchange.”
“Originally, Mt. Gox was a trading-card exchange website.”
Definition(s) from the Web
- Mt. Gox, called “Mount Gox” or simply “Gox”, was the most widely used bitcoin currency exchange market from shortly after its inception in 2010 to its insolvency late 2013. The market was closed February 25, 2014 and has since filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan and the United States, after losing 640 thousand bitcoins. A registrant on Mt. Gox had at least two sub-accounts: one for bitcoins (BTC), and one for fiat currency. Bitcoins were bought using funds from the trader’s fiat account, and the proceeds from the sale of bitcoins were deposited into the same account. Trading always involved bitcoins as trading between different national currencies was not offered. Trades on Mt. Gox’s executed from balances on deposit with the exchange which in turn made trading on the market instantaneous, compared to most other Bitcoin markets of 2010 where a subsequent settlement occurred manually between the trading partners. The disadvantage of this was that a third party had to be trusted with keeping the money safe. Mt. Gox was originally started by Jed McCaleb in July 2010, and was sold to Tibanne Co. in Japan in March 2011. Source
- Mt. Gox was a bitcoin exchange based in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Launched in July 2010, by 2013 and into 2014 it was handling over 70% of all bitcoin (BTC) transactions worldwide, as the largest bitcoin intermediary and the world’s leading bitcoin exchange. In February 2014, Mt. Gox suspended trading, closed its website and exchange service, and filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors. In April 2014, the company began liquidation proceedings. Mt. Gox announced that approximately 850,000 bitcoins belonging to customers and the company were missing and likely stolen, an amount valued at more than $450 million at the time. Although 200,000 bitcoins have since been “found”, the reasons for the disappearance—theft, fraud, mismanagement, or a combination of these—were initially unclear. New evidence presented in April 2015 by Tokyo security company WizSec led them to conclude that “most or all of the missing bitcoins were stolen straight out of the Mt. Gox hot cryptocurrency wallet over time, beginning in late 2011.” Source
