Bitcoin Bankruptcy Wasn't Really a Bust

In 2014, Mt. Gox -- "Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange," which grew from that improbable name into at one point the world's largest bitcoin exchange -- suffered the fate of all bitcoin exchanges, and had its bitcoins stolen. Since then everyone has just gotten used to the idea that all bitcoin exchanges get their bitcoins stolen, but at the time it was kind of a big deal; Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan, where it was based, and customers lost something like 750,000 bitcoins, worth about $500 million at the time.

But Mt. Gox kept looking for the bitcoins, and I guess it found some. This could lead to some weird results. When Mt. Gox imploded, in February 2014, bitcoin was trading in the hundreds of dollars. (It got as high as $806.83 on February 3, and as low as $451.58 on February 24.) Right now, three and a half years later, bitcoin is trading in the thousands of dollars. (Call it $6,500 and change, with continuing massive volatility.) And Mt. Gox's bankruptcy estate now has about 200,000 bitcoins. Meaning that, in very round numbers, it has about a quarter as many bitcoins as it did at its bankruptcy filing, but each bitcoin is worth 10 times as much.