DJ Mt. Gox Files for Bankruptcy Protection





By Eleanor Warnock and Takashi Mochizuki
     TOKYO--A lawyer for Mt. Gox announced at a news conference at the Tokyo
District Court that the embattled bitcoin exchange was filing for bankruptcy
protection and that Mt. Gox had outstanding debt of about Yen6.5 billion ($63.6
million).
     The exchange has been under fire from investors since it stopped bitcoin
withdrawals in early February, citing a technical issue that potentially made
fraudulent withdrawals possible.
     On Tuesday, Mt. Gox, which at one point handled more than 80% of trades in
the virtual currency, stopped all transactions, dealing the severest blow to
the bitcoin industry yet and raised concerns about a lack of protection for
users. Several Mt. Gox investors say they have little hope of recovering their
funds, with some individual investors saying they had bitcoins valued at
hundreds of thousands of dollars in Mt. Gox.
     Atsuko Fukase contributed to this article
     Write to Eleanor Warnock at eleanor.warnock@wsj.com and Takashi Mochizuki
at takashi.mochizuki@wsj.com
 
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  (END) Dow Jones Newswires
  February 28, 2014 04:50 ET (09:50 GMT)
  Copyright (c) 2014 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.- - 04 50 AM EST 02-28-14
 
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