In wake of Bitcoin spike, Instawallet halts service and Mt. Gox "eats" DDOS
Two days after Bitcoin blasted through its all-time price—shooting past $100 per BTC—Instawallet, one of the digital currency's easiest-to-use wallet sites, has shut down indefinitely. Bitcoin’s price peaked at around $140 late Tuesday but has since fallen back down. It’s hovering around $128 at present.
Meanwhile, Mt. Gox, the world’s largest bitcoin-trading site, wrote on Twitter Wednesday afternoon that it’s been experiencing a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. “Can confirm we are eating ddos right now, and for some reason Prolexic didn't block it,” the company noted.
Instawallet had branded itself as an “anonymous” Bitcoin wallet site. It created a randomly-generated account number every time the site was updated. That made it very easy for Bitcoin users to store their online cash, but it also apparently made it easy for hackers to disrupt the system. The problem was first brought to light on Monday.
