[Translation] MtGox and BTC-e, and the Lost Coins: The Ongoing Timeline of the Biggest Cybercrime in History

I thought this looked interesting, so I translated it into Japanese. Since you can check the black history in chronological order, it might reveal what happened to people who don’t know the era.

Let’s read it right away.

MtGox and BTC-e, and the Lost Coins: The Ongoing Timeline of the Largest Cybercrime in History

Around this time last year, it was natural to think there wouldn’t be any scandals worth reporting about Bitcoin. However, in the past few months, we have learned that while this technology is no longer brand new, it will remain interesting for some time to come.

With recent hard forks and the issuance of the first altcoin, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the news about progress in the MtGox case’s investigation reported last month has become mere background noise among media outlets covering the cryptocurrency industry.

Given that few current participants in the crypto ecosystem remember the MtGox theft or have been involved long enough to be affected by it, this is understandable. However, for people who have followed Bitcoin from the early days, any progress in solving the MtGox theft mystery is big news.

Considering recent events, namely the arrest of Alexander Vinnik, alleged to have stolen Bitcoins from MtGox, and the closure of BTC-e, let’s trace the history of the MtGox exchange, which has since ceased functioning.

January 2007

Magic: The Gathering players wanted to create a website where digital cards could be traded like stocks, so software developer Jed McCaleb acquired the domain mtgox.com (Magic The Gathering Online eXchange). The site operated for about three months in the latter half of 2007, but McCaleb later decided it wasn’t worth hosting the site in the long run.

July 18, 2010

After learning about Bitcoin, McCaleb quickly completed a trading site and launched it under the dormant mtgox.com domain name.

March 2011

Because spending time only on the site was impossible, McCaleb sold MtGox to Mark Carpels, a French software developer active in Japan.

June 19, 2011

MtGox suffered a security breach when the auditor’s computer was compromised, and hackers stole a large amount of Bitcoins. The hackers sold the stolen coins immediately, causing MtGox’s Bitcoin nominal price to crash to one cent (though the price was corrected within minutes). This incident was the first hint at MtGox’s security vulnerabilities.

September 2011

What the exchange and its users didn’t know at the time was that the private keys of MtGox’s hot wallets were copied in a wallet.dat file, allowing theft. As a result, hackers could directly access coins in the exposed wallets and spend Bitcoins deposited at those addresses over time.