MtGox website disappears amid huge bitcoin theft claim

The website of Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange MtGox went down today amid reports of a theft of the virtual currency worth hundreds of millions of dollars, dealing a blow to its credibility.
The bitcoin community rallied round to defend the unit, with chief executives of several major operators pledging to work together to shore up public faith in the project.
Visitors to the www.Mtgox.Com domain today got a blank page -- consistent with contents having been removed -- more than two weeks after the firm suspended cash withdrawals, claiming there was a bug in the software underpinning the crypto-currency.
A widely-shared document purporting to be a MtGox "crisis strategy" said the firm might have lost more than 744,400 bitcoins in a theft that had gone unnoticed for years.

That number of bitcoins would be worth more than USD 300 million, using rates at functioning exchanges today afternoon.
That figure would represent around five percent of the approximately USD 5.9 billion global value of bitcoins in existence.

It was not immediately possible to verify the document, which was posted on a blog written by someone who describes himself as "an entrepreneur and former VC who makes the business case for #Bitcoin".
Consternation has grown since MtGox stopped processing external transactions on February 7, claiming there was a problem with the programme that powers the currency and allows it to be transferred between users or swapped for goods and services.

The value of the unit on MtGox had gone into freefall since then. Around midday today, shortly before the shutdown, a bitcoin was worth USD 135. This compares with the USD 430 quoted by the CoinDesk bitcoin price index, which tracks the price of the currency on major exchanges.
Prices among exchanges are not always the same.
In January a bitcoin was worth more than USD 900 at MtGox, one of the world's first exchanges for the unit.