A bitcoin business that planned to use the blueprints for the once-successful Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox couldn't convince a bankruptcy judge yesterday that an early sale proposal to salvage the frozen exchange is being unfairly executed, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Stacey Jernigan rejected complaints raised by CoinLab Inc., which has sued Mt. Gox for $75 million after their licensing agreement fell apart and recently complained that a purchase offer from investor group Sunlot Holdings could be forced upon Mt. Gox customers "without any real scrutiny." Mt. Gox's lawyers told Judge Jernigan yesterday that a team of financial professionals in charge of the exchange, led by Nobuaki Kobayashi, hasn't committed to the Sunlot deal and is still open to other proposals — statements that seemed to diffuse CoinLab's allegations. Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy in February and suspended trading after announcing that it lost about 850,000 bitcoins, or roughly 7 percent of the world's bitcoins with a value of $473 million.
