Mt. Gox collapse
Once the dominant Bitcoin exchange, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after about 850,000 BTC (worth roughly $450M at the time) went missing. A security firm concluded most coins were stolen from its hot wallet over years.
Also known as: Mt. Gox, Mt Gox, MtGox, Mark Karpeles, Mark Karpelès
Summary
Mt. Gox was a Tokyo-based exchange that, at its peak, handled a majority of global Bitcoin transactions. In February 2014 it suspended trading and filed for bankruptcy after reporting that about 850,000 BTC (worth roughly $450 million at the time) were missing; about 200,000 BTC were later located. [1][2]
Findings
Security firm WizSec concluded that "most or all of the missing bitcoins were stolen straight out of the Mt. Gox hot wallet over time, beginning in late 2011", indicating a years-long undetected theft rather than a single event. [1]
Outcome
CEO Mark Karpelès was arrested in Japan in 2015. In 2019 a Japanese court found him guilty of falsifying data but acquitted him of embezzlement related to the missing bitcoins. [1][2] Creditor repayments have proceeded through a long-running civil rehabilitation process. [2]
Bracketed numbers refer to the numbered sources listed below.
Sources (2)
- Mt. Gox (overview) — Wikipedia
- Mt. Gox Explained: History, 2014 Collapse, and Current Status — Investopedia
See also
Gala Games exploitTokensOn May 20, 2024 an attacker abused a privileged minter account on the GALA token contract to mint 5 billion GALA (≈$200M+ nominal) and dumped ~600M of them for ~$22M of ETH before Gala froze the address. Gala Games called it an internal access-control failure; the attacker later returned the ~$22M.
HEX / PulseChain (Richard Heart)ProjectsCrypto projects (HEX, PulseChain, PulseX) created by Richard Heart (Richard Schueler). In July 2023 the U.S. SEC sued him for offering unregistered securities that raised $1B+ and for allegedly misappropriating ~$12M for luxury goods (including a 555-carat diamond). A court dismissed the case in 2024 for lack of U.S. jurisdiction; there was no finding of wrongdoing and Heart denies the allegations.
This page was last updated on Jun 15, 2026. View revision history.
