(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Today Bitcoin owners woke up to the news that one of the biggest Bitcoin exchanges and storage lockers in the world has disappeared. Started out as a Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange back in 09 before being rebranded to MT. Gox.
The company website went down, the twitter feed disappeared.
Exchange has been on shutdown from transfers a couple of weeks now. The site has been attacked by DDoS attacks and a host of attacks to steal bitcoins.
Reports have been floating around the company had a “transactional malleability” issue or in other words an exploit in its wallet system.
A total of 700,000 bit coins is missing along with a complete wipe out of the coins being saved by the company.
Leaked document has floated around detailing the company plans to recover along with what happened.
All, of course, is unconfirmed and nobody knows if it legit or not.

Some people who say Bitcoin shows off the wonderful nature of the free market and it also shows it short coming in human thinking. Behavioral economics is a rather interesting study of how financial markets crash and burn.
Bitcoins are a classic example of a bubble if you look into how it worked so far.
Some people believe bitcoin is the future of economics becoming a currency.
Everything that we know about markets so far shows you that a free market is not always the best thing in the world. Who knows maybe crypto currency has a future and this nothing but a small bump in the road.

CEO has stated "at a turning point" along with a couple statments
"In the event of recent news reports and the potential repercussions on Mt. Gox's operations and the market, a decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being in order to protect the site and our users"
"We will be closely monitoring the situation and will react accordingly."

Users of the exchange are angry with some looking like their wallets are gone or won't be able to access them for some time. It unknown how many coins the company was still holding, the offices in Japan are currently empty nobody is home. The company did have a seat on the Bitcoin Foundation as a board member but has quit that.
Last board member to quit was in legal trouble for Money laundering along with drug connections.

Money laundering, drug trafficking connections to black market Silk Road bitcoin has a series of dirty links. That said a couple legit companies in hosting, along with the service sector have started to support Bitcoin. Mainly due to not having to be charged any fees for using the standard currency.
Regulatory systems around the world are looking at Bitcoin asking should we act and how.

Ever since BitCoin took off, Mt. Gox has crumbled. I knew it would come to this point eventually.

I honestly think it's a good thing though. I never really cared for the BitCoin exchange on Mt. Gox.

My bitcoin worth dropped from $1500 to about $800

I wouldn't get too upset just yet. It dropped a lot because the exchange went down. I'm sure in the next week or so when they hype wears out it'll go back up again.

Not to mention because it went down, I'm sure there are a lot of people selling off their bitcoins in a "panic".

Its not a big deal got a cheaper deal on my 2 280x for scrypt mining and bought some more bitcoins while its still cheap.

Yeah I tend to agree, although I'm not sure about the price really, I could see it going back up since a lot of inexperienced traders think it will stay at $800 forever. In reality, Bitcoin has no intrinsic value whatsoever, there is nothing backing Bitcoin. Unless it becomes more popular in stores (which it will not due to it's high volatility) it is destined to hover at $500 or less once people realize that it doesn't have a vast future.

From what I have seen so far, most economists and people who been studying Bitcoin think the death of Mt. Gox is good news.
Don't have any Bitcoins but been following it



A couple people are using behavioral economics to understand bitcoin, great study which is ongoing for many into how we take risks.