The Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange hack was a significant event in 2014 that led to a temporary drop in Bitcoin’s price. At the time, the Tokyo-based crypto exchange was the largest on the market, with a trading volume of roughly 70% of Bitcoin’s total supply. Since its creation in 2010, Mt. Gox had been the victim of numerous hacks but had continued to survive.

However, 2014’s hack saw roughly 850,000 BTC stolen, wiping out most of the exchange’s digital assets. Mt. Gox suspended withdrawals on February 14, 2014, leading to an approximately 20% decrease in Bitcoin’s price to around $680 after trading at $850 for most of the week.

Ultimately, hackers took $450,000,000 (USD) of user’s funds, and Mt. Gox went bankrupt. Some former users claim there were issues with the website’s code that were not fixed in time. The reasons behind the hack are still not clear to this day, leading to multiple ongoing lawsuits and legal action against the exchange’s CEO Mark Karpelès.