The failure that defined custodial risk
Mt. Gox handled a dominant share of global bitcoin trading. Its collapse was not a single dramatic breach but an accumulation: losses that had reportedly been occurring over an extended period, discovered when withdrawals could no longer be met.
What a customer could actually have checked
Almost nothing — and that is the lesson. There was no proof-of-reserves practice, no segregation requirement, no supervisory regime demanding either. Customers had a claim recorded in a private database and no way to test whether the assets behind it existed. Every subsequent development in this area — proof of reserves, segregation rules, Japan’s registration regime — is a response to that gap.
Status: contained, not resolved
Conisec records this as Contained. The immediate failure is long closed, but creditor distributions have run for over a decade through civil rehabilitation, and “Resolved” would imply a conclusion that customers did not experience. See our status definitions.
Timeline
Append-only. Corrections are added as their own dated entry; earlier entries are never rewritten.
- Mt. Gox suspends bitcoin withdrawals, initially attributing the issue to transaction malleability. Mt. Gox
- Mt. Gox files for civil rehabilitation in Tokyo, reporting approximately 850,000 BTC missing. Mt. Gox
- Mt. Gox announces that approximately 200,000 BTC have been located in an old-format wallet. Mt. Gox
What to check
The trustee appointed under the Japanese proceedings publishes announcements to creditors; those filings are the authoritative record of claim status and distributions.
Conisec does not host or link recovery, revocation or "checker" tools. After a public incident, attackers routinely seed exactly those links using the names of publications covering the story. Use the affected project's own official channel, linked above, and nothing else.
Sources
- Mt. Gox, Official announcements to creditors (28 Feb 2014)
Not advice. This is a summary of published facts, not legal, tax or security advice. Verify against the primary sources linked above.
Last verified by Conisec Staff.
