Mt. Gox Incident - Bitcoin price plummeted by more than 80%

The Mt. Gox incident is the largest theft in the history of Bitcoin, which occurred in February 2014.

1. Price plunge

This bizarre plunge occurred at around 6:45 pm Beijing time, with 6,000 units of Bitcoin sold during the trading session. Within seconds, the price of Bitcoin fell directly from more than $600 to a minimum of $102.

2. Cause Analysis

At that time, Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin exchange located in Tokyo, Japan, announced that it had lost about 850,000 Bitcoins, of which 750,000 belonged to customers and 100,000 belonged to the platform. These Bitcoins accounted for 7% of the total circulation of Bitcoin at the time, and were worth about $460 million at the price at the time. Mt. Gox claimed that these Bitcoins were likely stolen by hackers.

3. Impact

The collapse of Mt. Gox caused shock and anger in the global Bitcoin community, and tens of thousands of users lost their Bitcoins and lost confidence in Bitcoin.

The collapse of Mentougou also had a huge impact on the price of Bitcoin, which fell from around $1,000 at the end of 2013 to around $200 at the beginning of 2014, a drop of more than 80%. The collapse of Mentougou also triggered the attention and intervention of governments and regulators in various countries on Bitcoin, and the legality and regulation of Bitcoin became a hot topic.