Do you know about the Mt. Gox Incident that Claimed Approximately 850,000 BTCs?
Mt. Gox was a major Bitcoin exchange that was first launched in July 2010. It later became the world's biggest Bitcoin exchange, handling approximately 70% of the world's Bitcoin transactions at some point 🤯.
However, the fate of Mt. Gox took a very drastic and dramatic turn. In February 2014, Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection, claiming that a hacker had exploited a vulnerability to the tune of about 850,000 BTCs (approximately 7% of all the BTC in existence at that time), 750,000 BTCs of which belonged to the users (it's always hackers 🙄).
The total $BTC lost would be equivalent to about $450 million dollars as of that time, and fast forwarding to now, it would be about $36 billion dollars 😳. All this money and BTC lost forever. This resulted in the exchange halting trading activities, creating panic among users.
About a month after the website was closed, approximately 200,000 BTCs were found in an old wallet, but efforts to find the remaining lost $BTC were to no avail.
Investigations later revealed internal issues such as operational and security lapses that made the exchange susceptible to hack attacks.
The Mt. Gox incident was significant in the cryptocurrency space because it meant that a large percentage of the world's $BTC supply had vanished forever. It had an impact on the perception of cryptocurrency exchanges and served as a wake-up call for the cryptocurrency industry, highlighting the importance of security measures when handling digital assets.
Anticipate a subsequent post where I'll talk about the latest unexpected update about Mt. Gox ten years after its shutdown, which is this year
