Mt Gox says 200,000 of total missing Bitcoins in old virtual wallets

In what appears to be some sort of good news for creditors and investors, Mt Gox announced in an online statement on Thursday that it was able to recover 200,000 of the 800,000 Bitcoins initially deemed missing in disused virtual wallets. The missing Bitcoins were said to have been found on March 7 when following bankruptcy procedures, the company's old format wallets were searched. The Associated Press said in a report that the found Bitcoins currently have a market value of around $120 million.

According to the statement, the 200,000 Bitcoins that were recovered during the bankruptcy process has been moved to offline wallets. The exchange's statement was not clear about what type the offline wallets are, which could range from USB sticks and paper documents.

The demise of the once-popular virtual currency exchange had been the biggest setback for Bitcoin. Following rumors and reports of customers who had difficulty making withdrawals on their Mt Gox account, the company decided to shut its site down without warning in late February, AP said. The viability of the Bitcoin plunged even further as the usually casual Mt Gox Chief Executive Officer Mark Karpeles was dressed in a suit during a press conference outside a Tokyo bankruptcy court announcing that the exchange has filed for protection from its creditors. It was then revealed that 750,000 Bitcoins of Mt Gox customers and 100,000 Bitcoins of the company's were deemed missing. Karpeles has told media that the missing Bitcoins would mostly be result of a theft.

Bitcoin, which was created by a programmer or a group of programmers under the name Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, rose to popularity after users find the coins as a cheap alternative in making payments anonymously across borders without third parties link banks.

AP said that despite the recovery of some of the missing Bitcoins, the news has raised additional questions on how to run the exchange.

Tags

Mt Gox bankruptcy, Mt Gox shutdown

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