05 Mar 2014 / Forbes – “It’s the death of bitcoin,” they cried … again. But they were wrong… again.
It’s been a turbulent few weeks for the world’s favorite digital currency. First, a bot issued a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on a number of bitcoin exchanges. The DDoS aimed to exploit an issue called transaction malleability, which enabled the attacker(s) to trick exchanges into processing bitcoin withdrawal requests twice.
After spotting this, many exchanges put a temporary halt on withdrawals while they tackled the issue. However, Mt. Gox’s ban on withdrawals went on to be rather more permanent.
Things just kept getting worse for the Tokyo-based exchange – once the biggest in the world – with rumours of financial difficulty turning into leaked documents revealing insolvency, then turning into a bankruptcy filing.
Before you start to feel too sorry for them, bear in mind they’ve not only lost 100,000 of their own bitcoins, but 750,000 BTC belonging to their customers. That totals $554m at the current exchange rate.
Many thought the death of one of the bitcoin ecosystem’s most famous companies would result in the demise of digital currency on the whole. Looks like they were wrong. Bitcoin and its brothers and sisters are very much still alive and kicking.
On the day of the aforementioned DDoS attack, the price, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index, spent most of the day hovering somewhere between $680 and $700, before falling less than 10% to a low of $633….. Read more
