Price of Bitcoin plummets following temporary Mt. Gox shutdown

Mt. Gox, one of the world’s biggest Bitcoin trading exchanges, has temporarily suspended all Bitcoin withdrawals with immediate effect as the team seeks to resolve technical issues experienced by some users while withdrawing Bitcoin. The exchange says that the increase in withdrawal traffic was “hindering” its efforts on a technical level, and to “get a better look at the process the system needs to be in a static state.”

The price of Bitcoin dropped sharply today after Mt. Gox announced that it was temporarily halting Bitcoin withdrawals on its trading platform. For months now, some Mt. Gox users have found it difficult to withdraw funds from their accounts; the withdrawal freeze will help Mt. Gox’s team get to the root of the problem, the exchange said. Mt. Gox, which is based in Tokyo, is the world’s third-largest Bitcoin exchange by recent trading volume. For years it was the No. 1 exchange, but BTC China took the top spot last fall, riding a huge wave of Asian interest in digital currencies. Since the Chinese government forbid banks and payment processors from handling bitcoins this past December, however, BTC China has fallen to fourth place.