By Nat Rudarakanchana - Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, once the world's biggest exchange for Bitcoin, filed for bankruptcy on Friday, blaming hackers and weakness in its own technology systems for losses of nearly half a billion dollars.
Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles apologized at a news conference at Tokyo District Court, where the company filed for bankruptcy protection, reports Reuters.
In total, the exchange lost 750,000 Bitcoins owned by its users and 100,000 of its own Bitcoins. That represents losses of $480 million at current Bitcoin prices, or 7 percent of the estimated total of Bitcoins in circulation.
Mt. Gox's bank account balances also showed discrepancies, though a lawyer for Mt. Gox declined to elaborate on the problems there.
The Mt. Gox exchange had liabilities of 6.5 billion yen ($63.7 million), which overshadowed its 3.84 billion yen in assets. Though it had 127,000 creditors as it became banrkupt, just over 1000 of those are Japanese.
In 2012, the Mt. Gox exchange saw average trading volumes of over 100,000 Bitcoins daily, making it by far the largest exchange, according to the Wall Street Journal. By 2014, that shrunk to 22,900 daily. Other major Bitcoin exchanges include BTC-e and Bitstamp.