Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox announced that it has set up a hotline in Japan, that will go live on March 3, and will be active from 10am to 5pm (Japan time), Monday through Friday to handle Bitcoin inquiries.
Mt Gox made the bankruptcy filing, a “civil rehabilitation,” last Friday, five days after CEO Mark Karpeles resigned from the foundation. The exchange acknowledged a massive loss of Bitcoins — 100,000 belonging to Mt Gox and nearly 750,000 belonging to the customers — with total value of approximately $486 million revealing that it is in $63.6 million debt, about twice that of its assets.
According to the post, Mt Gox has discovered a large amount of Bitcoins to have disappeared, with a high probability of being stolen as a result of abuse of the transaction malleability bug. The exchange also explained that there are large discrepancies between the amount of deposits by the users and the amount of cash held in financial institutions, which is still under investigation.
“We are investigating the causes of these problems. Since there are probably a variety of causes including hacking by third parties, we need to investigate a huge amount of transaction reports in order to establish the truth. As of this date, we cannot confirm the exact amount of missing deposit funds and the total amount of bitcoins which disappeared,” read the post.
Earlier last month, Mt Gox halted Bitcoin withdrawals citing a technical issue that was later revealed to be a bug causing transaction malleability. After two weeks of suspension, the exchange announced that it had implemented a fix and promised an update to arrive soon, but had various other issues.
Mt Gox, however, is already hit with a class-action suit filed by former user, reporting to have lost $25,000 because the exchange.
