MtGox, formerly the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, is the subject of a rescue attempt from a group of investors who want to save it from liquidation.
We need your help to stop a liquidation, which would be good neither for MtGox creditors nor bitcoin's reputation with the general public and regulators," wrote the investors on the Save Gox website.
Exchanges like MtGox offer a way to convert official currencies such as dollars into bitcoins. Each virtual coin represents a unique solution to a complex cryptographic problem, aimed at preventing duplication and forgery. However, the safety of the currency has been questioned by officials at the central banks of the US, the Netherlands, Denmark and China. The head of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, has flagged concerns about the currency being used for money laundering and has warned that the Fed "doesn't have authority to supervise or regulate bitcoin in anyway."
Since the closure of MtGox, the price of bitcoin has hovered at around half its December peak of $1,150 a coin. The decline began in the months before MtGox shut its website, as it halted withdrawal of bitcoins in an effort to prevent hackers stealing more.
But since MtGox finally collapsed, the price has been held down over fears that the Chinese government – one of bitcoin's most vocal opponents – will move against the currency. Founded in 2009 by American software hacker Jed McCaleb, MtGox was originally a site for people to trade cards for a game called Magic: The Gathering. MtGox is short for "Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange". Only 1,000 of MtGox's 127,000 creditors are Japanese.
