Bitcoin exchange MtGox has filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States.
MarketWatch reported the defaulted Bitcoin exchange filed for Chapter 15 in the States to protect itself from lawsuits as it attempts to pay off its 6.5 billion yen (about $64m, £38m, AU$71m) debts.
MtGox previously filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan on February 28, which only helped those in Tokyo and the US. With this new measur, foreign debtors and parties who lost their bitcoins on the MtGox can go through the US bankruptcy courts and systems to resolve their cases.
Earlier last month, MtGox lost track of 750,000 Bitcoins deposited by users as well as 100,000 of its own digital coins. As one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges, it held more than 6% of the world's cryptocurrency, worth roughly $549 million (about £329m, AU$608m) by today's trading rates.
Can't catch a break
In another bit of bad news, over the weekend hackers cracked into MtGox CEO Mark Karpeles' personal blog MagicalTux.net as well as his Tumblr and Reddit accounts.
The hackers used their access to post a zip file entitled MtGox2014Leak that claimed to reveal evidence of MtGox wrongdoing. Alleged internal documents inside the compressed archive claimed to reveal how the defunct exchange stole customer holdings and wrote them off as targets of theft.
The file and Karpeles' personal blog have already been taken down, but not before users on Twitter and Reddit supposedly confirmed their personal account balances on the included Excel spreadsheet, potentially verifying its legitimacy.
It's likely the same document also held passwords connected with MtGox, so we strongly urge users to change any of the same passwords they may have used elsewhere.
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