Mt. Gox kept exchange open despite knowledge of large-scale theft, filing suggests
Mt. Gox may have collected a large sum in trading fees in the weeks before its closure, even though it was already aware that a vast number of bitcoins had gone missing, its U.S. bankruptcy filing suggests.
A sworn declaration in the filing from Robert Karpeles, Mt. Gox ‘s CEO, reveals that the Bitcoin exchange knew in early February that its situation was far graver than it had disclosed at the time.
Mt. Gox halted bitcoin withdrawals from its exchange on Feb. 7. It told customers it was investigating possible fraud due to a security issue called transaction malleability, but did not specify at the time how many bitcoins were missing. Buying and selling on the exchange continued until Feb. 25, when its website went dark. Mt. Gox’s first disclosure of the scale of its problems came when it filed for bankruptcy protection in Tokyo District Court three days later, saying 750,000 of its customers’ bitcoins were missing, along with 100,000 of its own.
