Free Republic

Bitcoin was the star of the white-knuckle ride that cryptocurrencies offered in 2017 but lesser-known names, such as Ripple and Ethereum, are seen gaining prominence in 2018. While bitcoin jumped more than 1,200 percent last year, Ripple, created by the founder of bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, surged 35,000 percent in the same period. That means $100 invested in Ripple in January 2017 would have grown to about $35,000 at the start of this year. To be sure, bitcoin is still the biggest cryptocurrency by far - with market value exceeding $250 billion - and is expected to keep that mantle...

Hackers (or disgruntled insiders) claim to have released a 700+MB file of Mt. Gox operational information and transaction data, including one sheet claiming the exchange could still have a balance of over 951,116 BTC. One of the hackers managed to post the data on Gox CEO Mark Karpeles’ own blog, then announced the feat on Reddit. Karpeles’ site has since gone completely offline and Reddit moderators deleted the original post. At press time the mods were engaged in a cat and mouse game with other community members who re-posted the original quote and several links claiming to be mirrors of...

Two former federal agents accused of stealing bitcoins have been charged with wire fraud, money laundering and related offenses, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement. Carl Force, a former special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Shaun Bridges, a former Secret Service special agent, were both part of a Baltimore task force investigating Silk Road, the online marketplace often labeled the eBay of the drug trade. Force was given the task of establishing communications with Ross Ulbricht, aka "Dread Pirate Roberts," the San Francisco man who has been linked to Silk Road. Ulbricht was convicted last month...

A new report by researchers at ETH Zurich University in Switzerland has concluded that the now-bankrupt Japan-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox may have lost only 386 bitcoins ($203,000) due to issues stemming from transaction malleability. The finding provides new evidence that Mt. Gox’s continued claims that issues with the Bitcoin protocol were the primary reason for its insolvency are perhaps misleading or untrue. Released on 26th March, the report was authored by Christian Decker and Professor Roger Wattenhofer, both of the university’s Distributed Computing Group (DCG). Overall, the authors found that only 302,000 bitcoins could have ever been involved in...

Cutting right to the chase: we don't think going short is a good idea yet. Just when you would think the situation with Mt. Gox couldn't get any stranger, it has. Apparently, the exchange "found" almost BTC 200,000 in one of its old wallets this month. The coins would be currently worth approximately $115 million. A statement published yesterday on the exchanges website reads: MtGox Co., Ltd. had certain old-format wallets which were used in the past and which, MtGox thought, no longer held any bitcoins. Following the application for commencement of a civil rehabilitation proceeding, these wallets were rescanned...

Mt.Gox said on Friday it found 200,000 "forgotten" bitcoins on March 7, a week after the Tokyo-based digital currency exchange filed for bankruptcy protection, saying it lost nearly all the 850,000 bitcoins it held, worth some $500 million at today's prices. Mt.Gox made the announcement on its website. Online sleuths had noticed around 200,000 bitcoins moving through the crypto-currency exchange after the bankruptcy filing.

It was as inevitable as the sun rising in the east. The far east, in this case, over the Land of the Rising Sun. The Mt. Gox currency exchange in Tokyo, where buyers and sellers dealt in the unofficial currency Bitcoin, collapsed recently. As it disappeared, so did some $400 million. That money may have been lost, or stolen. Nobody’s sure. What many are sure of is that this collapse shows the need for more regulation. “The clear ends of Bitcoin for either transacting in illegal goods and services or speculative gambling make me wary of its use,” Sen. Joe...

A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday temporarily froze the U.S. assets of Mt. Gox chief Mark Karpeles and allowed alleged victims of the shuttered bitcoin exchange to demand evidence of what they claim is a massive fraud. The market for the digital currency was rocked last month when Mt. Gox, once the world's largest bitcoin exchange, ceased operations, and soon after filed for bankruptcy. Mt. Gox said it may have lost 750,000 bitcoins, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, in a hacking attack. The freeze on Karpeles' assets, issued by Judge Gary Feinerman in Chicago, also applies to Mt. Gox's...

Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox lost $400 million worth of bitcoins in February. Its management said the amount was stolen after hackers exploited a transaction bug to divert the funds, but some of Mt. Gox's users are not so sure, suggesting instead that the exchange's owners pocketed the cash. Now, facing silence from those owners about the fate of the money and the methods by which 6 percent of all of the Bitcoin in the world could have been stolen, a group of hackers claims it has broken into the bankrupted Bitcoin exchange's network to get answers.

On March 2nd 2014 Flexcoin was attacked and robbed of all coins in the hot wallet. The attacker made off with 896 BTC, dividing them into these two addresses: 1NDkevapt4SWYFEmquCDBSf7DLMTNVggdu1QFcC5JitGwpFKqRDd9QNH3eGN56dCNgy6 As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets, or otherwise to come back from this loss, we are closing our doors immediately. Users who put their coins into cold storage will be contacted by Flexcoin and asked to verify their identity. Once identified, cold storage coins will be transferred out free of charge. Cold storage coins were held offline and not within reach of the attacker. All other users will...

The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange in Tokyo filed for bankruptcy protection Friday and its chief executive said 850,000 bitcoins, worth several hundred million dollars, are unaccounted for. The exchange's CEO Mark Karpeles appeared before Japanese TV news cameras, bowing deeply. He said a weakness in the exchange's systems was behind a massive loss of the virtual currency involving 750,000 bitcoins from users and 100,000 of the company's own bitcoins. That would amount to about $425 million at recent prices. The online exchange's unplugging earlier this week and accusations it had suffered a catastrophic theft have drawn renewed regulatory attention to...

U.S. and Japanese regulators are investigating the collapse of the world's largest exchange for trading bitcoins, the virtual currency that has grown in popularity among technophiles for buying products and services online. The separate investigations were launched Wednesday as supporters of the virtual currency insisted that the shutdown of Mt. Gox was only a temporary setback for the novel monetary system. The failure of the Tokyo exchange, which may have included the theft of almost 750,000 bitcoins worth more than $300 million, was seen by critics as derailing prospects for the virtual currency. But several high-profile bitcoin investors came forward...

In a stunning blow to a novel way to buy products and services, the world's largest exchange for trading bitcoin currency shut down Tuesday, triggering a massive sell-off and sending many prospective investors away — perhaps for good. "This is extremely destructive," said Mark Williams, a risk-management expert and former Federal Reserve Bank examiner. "What we're seeing is a lot of the flaws. It's not only fragile, it's fragile as eggshells." The mysterious circumstances that triggered the failure of the exchange, Mt. Gox in Tokyo, is only adding to the renewed anxiety over the virtual currency, which just a month...

Embattled bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox appeared to be undergoing more convulsions, as its website became unavailable, signaling a new stage in troubles that have dented the image of the virtual currency.

MtGox is resigning from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation as it remains unable to restart full operations after claiming to have been hit by a bug. They've also deleted all Tweets from their Twitter account. A person familiar with the situation said it was not clear when MtGox would next update users about its technical problems. "They seem to be struggling with everything," the person said via email. A second person said they did expect the exchange to make an announcement in the coming days.

Ever wonder what a digital bank run looks like? Nearly one million Mt. Gox users are finding out first hand.The Tokyo-based exchange, popular amongst currency traders, has risen in prominence by offering its customers storage services in a variety of currencies. This effectively makes it act as an online bank. One such “currency” that it allows accounts to be denominated in is bitcoin.Yesterday the exchange halted withdrawals of the digital currency, citing a technical malfunction. It promises to reopen for business on February 10th. What many news sources are missing is that this is not a particularly new development –...

Virtual currency bitcoin lost nearly twenty percent of its value on Thursday evening, after major exchange Mt Gox halted trading to try to resolve ongoing technical issues. The digital currency — which is known for its wild price fluctuations — was trading at $680.52 on Friday morning, having traded around $850 for most of the week, according to CoinDesk, which tracks the price of bitcoin.

That hands-off stance may have started to change this week when the feds took action against Mt. Gox, the world’s leading Bitcoin exchange. Many people use Dwolla, a PayPal-like payment network, to send dollars to their Mt. Gox accounts. They then use those dollars to buy Bitcoins. On Tuesday, Dwolla announced that it had frozen Mt. Gox’s account at the request of federal investigators. It’s the first federal action against the currency. CNet has confirmed that the asset seizure was initiated by Homeland Security Investigations, a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Among other things, that agency has the power...