The Fall of Mt. Gox
28 February 2014
The exchange went dark. The ledger kept running. A defining lesson in custody.
Origins
As Bitcoin trading expanded, users increasingly depended on exchanges to hold coins and match orders. Mt. Gox became a central venue, concentrating operational risk inside an ecosystem built around a distributed ledger.
The moment
After halting withdrawals and then trading, Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan on 28 February 2014. Contemporary reporting recorded missing bitcoin and a breakdown of confidence. Initial loss estimates were provisional and should not be confused with a final accounting.
The aftermath
The failure made the distinction between Bitcoin’s protocol and an exchange’s liabilities painfully visible. This archive connects it to FTX as a comparison in custody and institutional failure, not as a claim that the two collapses had identical causes.