Mt. Gox, once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan on Friday, saying that it may have lost nearly half a billion dollars worth of the virtual coins due to hacking into its faulty computer system, Reuters reported today. The collapse caps a tumultuous few weeks in which the company has remained virtually silent after halting trades of the crypto-currency, shaking the nascent but burgeoning bitcoin community. Mt. Gox said that the exchange, used overwhelmingly by foreigners, had lost 750,000 of its users' bitcoins and 100,000 of its own. Many bitcoin market participants have said Mt. Gox's problems were specific to the company and were caused by what they said was a lax attitude by Mt. Gox's French CEO Mark Karpeles, while bitcoin itself — free of any central bank control — was still a noble venture.
