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Image credit: Blockonomi

2011 was an eventful year for Mt.Gox. The exchange had just completed two hacking incidents in early March and late May, and another penny bitcoin farce in mid-June. According to BitMEX data, around midnight on June 20, 2011, Beijing time, there was a shocking market on the Mt.Gox platform, and the price of Bitcoin plummeted from around US$17.5 to US$0.01 in a very short period of time. The users who were the first to hear the news at that time immediately joined the bargain hunting army, and a large number of orders emerged on the platform within a short period of time, and the Mt.Gox service was once interrupted.

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Bitcoin trading volume during Mt.Gox price crash (Source: BitMEX Research)

The exchange issued an official statement more than an hour after the incident, explaining that the abnormal price was caused by the hacking of the account of founder Jed McCaleb. On the same day, Jed’s account was breached by an IP address from Hong Kong. Hackers used the account’s database management authority to conduct low-priced trading operations and obtain a large amount of Bitcoin from it. Fortunately, at that time, the Mt.Gox platform set a daily withdrawal limit of no more than 1,000 US dollars and a limit of 2,000 BTC, so even if a hacker bought a large amount of bitcoin at a low price, he could only withdraw 2,000 BTC in the end. BTC.

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Attacks experienced by Mt.Gox in 2011 (Source: Cracking Mt.Gox, BitMEX Research)

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