Who would have thought that people would run into problems when a former hub for swapping “Magic: The Gathering” trading cards became the largest bitcoin exchange in the world? The Wall Street Journal on Thursday evening reported that Mt. Gox has found 200,000 missing bitcoins. The news comes nearly a month after the exchange’s loss of roughly 850,000 bitcoins drove it to file for bankruptcy protection in late February.
Mt. Gox said recently that a major breach resulted in the theft of $500 million worth of bitcoin. Meanwhile, hackers that infiltrated the system cried “fraud” and said they had evidence that Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles still had control of the bitcoin.
We may never know what really happened.
A statement from Mt. Gox suggests that the missing 200,000 bitcoins were found in a wallet that the company no longer uses. “We believed there were no bitcoins left in old wallets, but found 199,999.99 bitcoins on March 7,” Karpeles said in the statement.
There are still approximately 650,000 bitcoins left unaccounted for.
