In 2014, Mt. Gox — once the world’s biggest Bitcoin exchange — collapsed overnight.
Traders logged in only to see their balances vanish, as the platform admitted an astonishing 850,000 BTC were gone. Back then, the loss was about $450M. At today’s price of $114K per coin, that’s a staggering $100B.
The coins weren’t lost in a single hack. Instead, Mt. Gox was quietly drained for years while customers kept trading, unaware the vault was bleeding dry. By the time the truth surfaced, the entire exchange was in ruins.
Investigators traced much of the missing Bitcoin to wallets linked to Alexander Vinnik, a Russian operator of the shadowy BTC-e exchange — a notorious hub for laundering billions in dirty crypto. Authorities allege Vinnik was a key figure in cleaning the Mt. Gox fortune.
His 2017 arrest sparked an international tug-of-war, with the U.S., France, and Russia all vying to prosecute him. Meanwhile, Mt. Gox creditors are only now receiving partial repayments, even as the ghost of its collapse continues to haunt the crypto world more than a decade later.
