Mt. Gox, the Bitcoin exchange that filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year saying that hackers had made off with a half-billion dollars’ worth of the virtual currency, said on Wednesday that it would most likely be liquidated.
In a statement posted on its website, the Tokyo-based company said a local court had dismissed its request that it be allowed to try to rehabilitate its business. A court-appointed lawyer will now oversee its assets, the statement said, ahead of any payout to creditors.
Mt. Gox said that drafting a rehabilitation plan had proved “difficult.†When it filed for bankruptcy protection last month, the exchange said it was unclear what had happened to its users’ Bitcoin, or indeed whether its accounting of its currency holdings was accurate.
The company later said it had discovered about 200,000 of the virtual coins in an “old-format†wallet that stored the virtual currency offline.
Documents leaked earlier this week showed one plan, backed by a group of United States investors, that proposed buying the company for just one Bitcoin, or about $500.
The move to liquidate the company “will create great inconvenience and concerns to our creditors for which we apologize,†the company statement said. Mark Karpeles, the exchange’s chief executive, has “lost his authority†over the company’s assets, it said.
Mt. Gox had been a pioneer in the world of virtual currency exchanges, at one point handling about 80 percent of Bitcoin transactions. But last year it began losing significant ground to more advanced exchanges, like BTC-e in Bulgaria and Bitstamp in Slovenia.
Mt. Gox was also plagued by late payments to its users, especially after the authorities seized some $5 million of its funds in the United States in mid-2013, saying it had failed to register as a money-transmitting service.
Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in Tokyo in late February, saying it had lost 750,000 of its Bitcoin customers’ holdings and more than 100,000 of its own coins â€" essentially its entire stock, worth almost $500 million.
The company faces class-action lawsuits in the United States and Canada from users who claim fraud by the company and by Mr. Karpeles. Mr. Karpeles could not be reached for comment.
