The Future of Bitcoin After the Mt. Gox Incident

No doubt it’s been a crazy week for anyone even remotely interested in Bitcoin. Mt. Gox, once the largest Bitcoin marketplace out there, has shut down, putting a bitter end to an almost month-long situation in which all withdrawals were halted because of “technical issues”.

Mt. Gox BTC price evolution in February 2014, source: Clark Moody

As customers were unable to move their funds out from Mt. Gox, the world’s most famous exchange essentially became isolated from the rest of the Bitcoin ecosystem, making the Bitcoin price traded on Mt. Gox plummet to as low as $100 for 1 BTC before the exchange went completely offline.

In our forecast for 2014, we’ve stated that attacks on Bitcoin, specifically attacks on Bitcoin pools, exchanges and Bitcoin users will become one of the most high-profile topics of the year. These attacks will be especially popular with the fraudsters as their cost-to-income ratio is very favorable.

While the Mt. Gox incident might be the most significant in Bitcoin history to-date, as it is rumored to be worth 744,408 Bitcoins, or more than $300 million at current BTC prices, the only question that remains unanswered is what actually caused it.

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