Mt. Gox is the biggest black swan event in Bitcoin history.
Mt. Gox (full name Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange) was originally a trading site for magic cards, which was transformed into a Bitcoin exchange in 2010.
The founder, Jed McCaleb, later sold it to French programmer Mark Karpelès, and the platform moved to Tokyo. By 2013, it accounted for over 70% of global Bitcoin trading volume at one point, when Bitcoin was just starting to gain popularity and everyone was rushing to buy and sell here.
However, good times didn’t last long. In February 2014, Mt. Gox suddenly announced that it had lost 850,000 bitcoins (750,000 from users + 100,000 of its own), which was worth about $450 million at the time. The platform suspended withdrawals, shut down, and filed for bankruptcy. Investigations revealed that hackers had been gradually stealing coins since 2011, mainly due to poor security of hot wallets and chaotic management. The price of Bitcoin plummeted directly from over $1,000 to around $400, marking the first major shock in the crypto world.
After the bankruptcy, the trustee recovered 200,000 forgotten bitcoins, and a portion was left to compensate users. The process was extremely delayed, with legal disputes dragging on for more than a decade. In 2024, the formal restitution of BTC and BCH began, facilitated through platforms like Kraken and Bitstamp, allowing many creditors to finally receive their funds. However, some procedures were still incomplete, and deadlines kept being extended, moving from October 2025 to October 2026.
Currently, there are still about 35,000 bitcoins left in the Mt. Gox wallet, valued at several billion dollars, waiting to be distributed to the remaining individuals. The Mt. Gox incident serves as a profound lesson: it made everyone aware of the significant risks of centralized exchanges, promoted the popularization of security measures like cold wallets, multi-signatures, and insurance, and accelerated the entry of regulation.
If you are an old crypto community member, this event is a painful memory. However, the crypto market is much more mature now, but each major transfer still causes a bit of market anxiety, fearing that creditors will sell and crash the market. Nevertheless, it has been proven that the market's absorption capacity is much stronger than before.
