Mt Gox set to liquidate as court denies rehabilitation

Credit: Reuters/Yuya Shino

Mark Karpeles, chief executive of Mt. Gox, attends a news conference at the Tokyo District Court in Tokyo February 28, 2014.

These people cited the complexity of the procedure and the lack of realistic rehabilitation plans for the Tokyo-based exchange as reasons for the move, the newspaper said. ( r.reuters.com/nus58v)

Mt. Gox, once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan last month, saying it may have lost some 850,000 bitcoins - worth around $454 million at today's rates - due to hacking into its computer system. It has since said it found 200,000 of those bitcoins.

Mt. Gox's lawyers declined to comment on the matter.

Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles won't travel to the United States to answer questions about the bitcoin exchange's U.S. bankruptcy case, Mt. Gox lawyers told a federal judge this week.

(Reporting by Supriya Kurane in Bangalore and William Mallard in Tokyo; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)