In February 2014, Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, abruptly stopped allowing withdrawals.

The exchange eventually filed for bankruptcy, and 850,000 bitcoins—worth $450 million at the time—went missing. The mystery of who stole them and how has never been solved.

Mt. Gox was founded in 2010 by Jed McCaleb, a programmer who also created the failed eDonkey2000 file-sharing network. In 2011, McCaleb sold Mt. Gox to French national Mark Karpelès for an undisclosed amount.

Karpelès, a self-taught computer engineer, turned Mt. Gox into the largest bitcoin exchange in the world.

At its peak in early 2014, Mt. Gox was handling over 70% of all bitcoin transactions worldwide. But behind the scenes, Mt. Gox was a mess.

Karpelès was a terrible CEO: He micromanaged his employees, constantly changed Mt. Gox’s business strategy, and made poor decisions that put the company in financial jeopardy. In early 2014, Mt. Gox was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Then, in February 2014, Mt. Gox suddenly stopped allowing withdrawals. The company claimed that it needed to halt withdrawals because of a “bug” in the bitcoin software that allowed hackers to steal bitcoins from Mt. Gox accounts.

But many people believe that Mt. Gox halted withdrawals because it was insolvent and didn’t have enough bitcoins to pay its customers. Gox eventually filed for bankruptcy and 850,000 bitcoins were missing—presumably stolen by hackers or embezzled by Karpelès.

The missing bitcoins were worth $450 million at the time and would be worth over $5 billion today.

The mystery of who stole Mt. Gox’s bitcoins and how they did it has never been solved. There are many theories but no definitive answer. It’s possible that hackers stole the bitcoins by exploiting a flaw in the bitcoin software or by hacking into Mt.

Gox’s computer systems directly. It’s also possible that Karpelès embezzled the bitcoins or simply lost them due to mismanagement (he claims he doesn’t know where they are). We may never know for sure who stole Mt.�.