A group of investors wish to buy the now bankrupt Mt. Gox for a symbolic price of 1 BTC (around $400 USD).
The investment group consists of venture capitalists William Quigley and Matthew Roszak, and led by Brock Pierce. It is important to note a few things about Brock Pierce. He was a childhood actor, who became a very successful entrepreneur. He was actively involved in the creation of virtual currencies and virtual goods. He founded a company called Internet Gaming Entertainment in 2001, and it became the biggest trader of virtual currencies and accounts for most multi-player games, such as Word of Warcraft, Eve Online, Lineage 2 etc.
Mt. Gox – the once biggest Bitcoin exchange declared bankruptcy in Japan abround 2 months ago, stating that hackers have stolen more than 750,000 BTC from their users and 100,000 of their own capital. The unofficial version of the events, however, could be a little closer to the truth – sloppy management, not giving a damn and inexperience.
The future owners hope to restore Mt. Gox to it’s former glory and by allocating 50% of all commission to at least partially pay back the users and creditors. Mt. Gox announced in March that they “found” almost 200,000 Bitcoin in an old-format wallet, which was deemed empty at some point previously. Acquiring Mt. Gox won’t be an easy task for the would-be owners because it can only be approved by the Japanese court, and virtually zero valuation is likely to be an obstacle too. The investors argued that the price reflects the information vacuum around Bitcoin that has been lost by the exchange, which makes it hard to evaluate the total cost of the loss.