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Mt. Gox

Mt. Gox63 posts

Mt. Gox was one of the first Bitcoin exchanges, a place where customers could convert their local currencies into the virtual currency. The site was located in Japan and run by Mark Karpeles, a young French programmer. As Bitcoin increased in value the site experienced technical difficulties, hacking and public relations crises, culminating in the exchanges’ bankruptcy in February 2014, and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of users’ funds.

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Mar 2011

Karpeles buys Mt. Gox

Acquisition0 Comments

Mt-Gox-LogoKarpeles buys Mt. Gox from an unemployed software hacker named Jed McCaleb.  Before the site started trading in Bitcoins, it was an online marketplace where people could buy and sell cards for the Magic: The Gathering trading card game. Mt. Gox  is short for “Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange” McCaleb, nervous about regulatory scrutiny on bitcoin, wanted rid of the exchange and sold it to Karpeles in for no upfront fee, people with knowledge of the deal said. Karpeles told others he had later paid McCaleb a small fee, calling it “a very good deal”.