MtGox Website Down, Trading Disabled, and No Answers as Insolvency/Fraud Taking Place

MtGox problems have peaked with trading being disabled about five hours ago, followed by the website going blank.  The actions occurred after troubles appeared on the horizon yesterday when the bitcoin exchange’s Twitter feed had all of its tweets erased as well as an announcement that MtGox had moved out of its office headquarters last week. This led the firm to issue that it had resigned from the Bitcoin Foundation this week.

Reporting technical glitches that had led to delays in bitcoin withdrawals, prices of bitcoin at Mtgox had been declining since the beginning of February, briefly hit a low below $100 over the weekend.  Since first reporting that it was being affected by transaction malleability, key developers of the bitcoin community had backed up that they were in fact communicating with MtGox to provide solutions, but the exact damage of the problems and whether bitcoins had been stolen was unknown.  During the entire process, information from the company was slow in reaching the market, with only occasional updates of further delays taking place.  Despite worries that the company was in fact involvement, and requests for transparency from customers, the firm refrained from issuing any proof of record of its financials to assure clients that their funds were safe.

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Reacting to the news, competing firms have issued statements that the problems at MtGox aren’t indicvative of failures with bitcoins and problems at their companies (Joint statement from Coinbase, BTC China, Kraken, Bitstamp, Bl.ockchain.info, and Circle).  However, prices of bitcoins at other exchanges have been under pressure with a low of $466 on BTC-e reached earlier today.