Mt. Gox claims to have found over $100 mn in 'forgotten' bitcoins
Mt. Gox said it found 200,000 “forgotten" bitcoins on March 7, just a week after the digital-currency exchange filed for bankruptcy, claiming it had lost $500 million worth of bitcoins.
Mt. Gox said Friday on its website that the found bitcoins were in an old-format online wallet that the exchange did not believe contained any bitcoins. But after checking again following the bankruptcy filing, Mt. Gox found the US$116,600,000 in cryptocurrency.
"On March 7, 2014, MtGox Co., Ltd. confirmed that an old format wallet which was used prior to June 2011 held a balance of approximately 200,000 BTC," the statement said.
"For security reasons, the 200,000 BTC which were at first on the 7th moved to online wallets, were moved between the 14th and 15th to offline wallets. These bitcoin movements, including the change in the manner in which these coins were stored, had been reported to the court and the supervisor by counsels."
Following the bankruptcy filing, some Mt. Gox users weren’t convinced of the explanation that technical bugs had caused the loss. Some suggested that the missing money had been absorbed by Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles, who has been a target of hackers in recent weeks.
