Mt Gox has gone offline, and no news is currently coming forth from the Bitcoin exchange. The website has been wiped blank, and the official Mt Gox Twitter feed is now gone. Attempted transactions through the Mt Gox wallet are also blocked, preventing users from withdrawing their cryptocurrency. This comes on the heels of news that Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles has left the Bitcoin Foundation.
Withdrawls from Mt Gox have been halted since 7 February, after hackers discovered a weakness in the cryptocurrency and were able to dupe the exchange into transferring out currency. All transactions were halted to give time for the flaw to be corrected; a move that caused the value of Bitcoin to plummet.
However, information has been trickling out that the domain for gox.com has been sold to the parent company of Mt Gox. Users who attempt to connect to gox.com are now redirected to mtgox.com, which makes for some interesting speculation about the future of the exchange.
Bitcoin itself has seen explosive growth over the last few months, with prices peaking at close to US$1000. The success of the currency has had several national banks worried, which lead to it being banned in several countries like China and Thailand. Lately, the issue surrounding Mt Gox has weakened confidence in Bitcoin and sent prices tumbling.
