Mt. Gox

Mt. Gox started life in 2010 as a niche platform for trading cards from Magic: The Gathering, but within a few years it became the world's largest Bitcoin exchange. Based in Shibuya, Tokyo, it was handling more than 70% of all global Bitcoin transactions by early 2014. Its rise was meteoric, and its fall was just as dramatic. In February 2014, the exchange abruptly halted trading, shut down its website, and filed for bankruptcy protection, leaving hundreds of thousands of users unable to access their funds.

The scale of the disaster became clear over the following months. Roughly 850,000 bitcoins were missing, worth hundreds of millions of dollars at the time. Investigations, including a 2015 report by Tokyo security firm WizSec, concluded that most of the bitcoins had been stolen directly from the exchange's hot wallet over a period starting in late 2011. The thefts continued for years, hidden by poor security and internal mismanagement. Former CEO Mark Karpelès was arrested in 2015 and later convicted of embezzlement, though he was released on appeal.

Mt. Gox's collapse sent shockwaves through the crypto world and forced Japan to create the first formal regulations for cryptocurrency exchanges. The brand, once a symbol of innovation, became a cautionary tale. But the story didn't end in 2014. After more than a decade of legal battles, the trustee began repaying creditors in 2026. In June of that year, the trustee moved about 10,422 bitcoins, worth roughly $739 million, to new wallets ahead of the repayment deadline. By August, the official distribution process had begun, marking the end of a long and painful chapter for the victims of one of history's largest financial failures. [edit]