In the wake of the abrupt closure of the world's most go-to virtual currency exchange, Mt Gox, lawmakers in the US insist that regulation of the Bitcoin industry should be done urgently, said a Forbes newsmagazine report.
On Tuesday, the website for Mt Gox has disappeared, sending investors refreshing their computer screens furiously in the hopes of getting the site back up instead of a blank page. CNN Money said in a separate report that Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles had resigned from the board of directors of the Bitcoin Foundation over the weekend. The virtual exchange has yet to provide a public statement about its shutdown. Reuters earlier reported that the headquarters of the virtual currency exchange in Japan is empty.
Senator Tom Carper told Forbes in a statement, "The disturbing news today from Japan is a reminder of the damage potentially ill equipped and unregulated financial actors can wreak on unsuspecting consumers. My staff is working closely with relevant federal agencies to determine what lessons can be learned from this failure to help ensure this does not happen here in the United States."
Benjamin M Lawsky, who is New York's chief financial regulator, also stated about Mt Gox's shutdown, " While all the facts surrounding the situation at Mt. Gox in Japan are not yet clear, these developments underscore that smart, tailored regulation could play an important role in protecting consumers and the security of the money that they entrust to virtual currency firms."
On the other hand, Bitcoin-backed businesses issued a joint statement insisting their investors to remain calm about Mt Gox's closure. BTC China CEO Bobby Lee, whose business is one of the many that signed the joint statement, believed that Mt Gox was simply a bad egg that needed to be taken out of the basket. In a show of confidence in the virtual currency, Lee said, "I'm not worried about any long-term effects of this on Bitcoin. In the short term, for self-fulfilling prophecy reasons, Bitcoin prices will come down a bit, due to this ‘bad news.' However, in the long run, since Bitcoin is decentralized, this Mt Gox episode will fade away in memory and Bitcoin will remain strong."
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