Mt. Gox said it had discovered 200,000 Bitcoins last March 7 in an old wallet it was not anymore using, Reuters reported.
The "forgotten" Bitcoins were found a week after Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy. The Tokyo-based digital currency exchange said close to 850,000 Bitcoins were lost which had a value of about $500 million at current prices. Mt. Gox said they found the Bitcoins in an old format wallet that they thought did not anymore contain the crypto-currency but looked into it again after it sought bankruptcy protection, the report said.
In a statement, the exchange which is headed by Mark Karpeles said, "On March 7, 2014, MtGox Co., Ltd. confirmed that an old format wallet which was used prior to June 2011 held a balance of approximately 200,000 BTC." Mt. Gox added that it had transferred these 200,000 Bitcoins to offline wallets from the online wallet because of security reasons. The exchange added, "These bitcoin movements, including the change in the manner in which these coins were stored, had been reported to the court and the supervisor by counsels."
However, Edelson law firm partner Steven L. Woodrow who represents Gregory Greene, the resident of Illinois who proposed the class action on what he alleged is a case of massive fraud perpetrated by Mt. Gox, is skeptical about the finding of the Bitcoins. A Chicago judge that is handling the class action against the Bitcoin exchange reversed an order granted before and permitted the tracking of the movement of some of the exchange's Bitcoins, the report said.
Woodrow told Reuters through email, "Today in court we got relief ... specifically to track the 180,000 bitcoins, which we've been monitoring. Hours later, Mt. Gox claimed it "found" these bitcoins ... it appears Mt. Gox realized we were close and decided to acknowledge that it owned these 180,000-200,000 bitcoins."
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