Book cover for Ultimate Catastrophe: How MtGox Lost Half a Billion Dollars and Nearly Killed Bitcoin by Mark Hunter

Ultimate Catastrophe

How MtGox Lost Half a Billion Dollars and Nearly Killed Bitcoin

2025 Released
304 Pages
5-6 Hours
Audiobook Unavailable
Tulip PublishingISBN 9781068475573

MtGox was the biggest Bitcoin exchange in the world when it imploded in 2014, taking almost half a billion dollars in customer funds with it.

The collapse of MtGox, triggered by a perfect storm of crippling hacks and spectacular mismanagement, shocked the Bitcoin world to its core and left the fledgling cryptocurrency on the ropes. Worse, it started a battle for compensation by creditors that took over a decade to resolve, by which time the loss was calculated at over $50 billion.

Ultimate Catastrophe - How MtGox Lost Half a Billion Dollars and Nearly Killed Bitcoin covers the rise and fall of MtGox and the titanic fights waged by those whose lives were turned upside-down by its capitulation: the sleuths, both amateur and professional, who hunted down the hackers; the desperate desire of MtGox CEO, Mark Karpelès, to clear his name; and the efforts of the tens of thousands of defrauded customers to claw back what was rightfully theirs.

With insight from those who built it, used it and investigated its demise, join Mark Hunter as he reveals for the first time the full story of the birth, life and untimely death of MtGox.

Mark Hunter

Mark Hunter is an author and ghostwriter with twenty years of experience in the literary world. He has ghostwritten for a very eclectic range of clients, from members of the Kuwaiti royal family to self-made millionaires, and has worked as a writing workshop leader in British theatres. Mark became interested in the cryptocurrency world in 2017 and has been writing for blockchain projects and crypto news websites ever since. In 2023, he published Ultimate Catastrophe: How MtGox Lost Half a Billion Dollars and Nearly Killed Bitcoin, the first book covering the 2014 collapse of Bitcoin exchange MtGox. Mark lives in Harrogate, England, with his wife and two children.

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