Mt. Gox files for bankruptcy in U.S., CEO's accounts hacked

NEW YORK, March 10 (UPI) -- Mt. Gox, once the largest bitcoin exchange, filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. on Sunday, after filing for similar protection in Tokyo last month.

The bitcoin exchange filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 15, which deals with insolvency cases that spread across more than one country. By filing in the U.S., foreign debtors can now find recourse in U.S. courts and the U.S. will be able to work with foreign countries and parties to help solve the case, as well as protect the interests of Mt. Gox's creditors and its remaining assets.

Over the weekend, anonymous hackers seemed to have taken over some of the accounts of CEO Mark Karpeles, an action that seems to have stemmed from the growing frustration over the uncertainty surrounding Mt. Gox. The attackers took over Karpeles' personal blog and Reddit account, accessing information about Mt. Gox's trading activity.

The hackers posted a 716 MB file containing all the information they had accessed. It contained a spreadsheet of millions of trades, entries from Mt. Gox's business ledger and information about its back-office administration software.

"It's time that Mt. Gox got the Bitcoin community's wrath instead of [the] Bitcoin community getting Goxed," wrote the hackers in a message along with the data file.

Goxed refers to the sudden interruptions in trading Mt. Gox imposed last month when it was having to deal with technical glitches. Last month, Mt. Gox shut down its service abruptly, took down its Twitter feed and deactivated its website following a glitch in their Bitcoin wallet. Later it was revealed that the company had lost approximately 750,000 bitcoins deposited by users and 100,000 of its own bitcoins.

[ZDNet] [BBC]