It could have been a margin call or a leveraged trader panicking as btc-e offer metatrader and margin trading.
By the way, here is the explanation of the supposed problem of MtGox, based on the PR release this morning: "An attacker requests a withdrawal from Gox. Mt Gox signs the transaction, and records in their internal records what they expect the txid will be. The attacker monitoring transactions broadcasted by Gox takes the signed transaction, modifies it slightly so that it will still be valid, but results in a different txid. The attacker rebroadcasts this altered transaction to the network, in the hope that it will propagate faster than Gox's and be the one that gets solidified into the blockchain. If the attacker succeeds, then Gox's internal records will indicate that the transaction never went through (they are searching the blockchain for what they thought the txid should be). But in fact, it did go through. Attacker claims they never got their coins, and ask Gox to reperform the transaction. Attacker has now doubled their money." Edit: This video is from a year ago, but still funny and actual: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ku1A5Ox8U
The only people still using mtgox are the recent newbies who thought mtgox is reliable, and the guys doing price arbs. Mtgox blames the bitcoin protocol itself for their own incompetence as if just discovered this new word phrase: transaction malleability. Anyone with slight technical knowledge of the protocol knows this behavior is well documented and known since the early days in 2011. It is the responsibility of the exchange to ensure it does not happen (and they can easily by always use new address + verify the target/source address, transaction amount, and approx time, it is trivial). Every single exchange except mtgox was able to easily put code in place to prevent this from happening. In the short term this is bad for bitcoin as you have morons at cnbc etc..blasting articles with headline stating price crash due to bitcoin bug, when in fact there is no new bugs/issues with the protocol itself. In the long term, it is good for bitcoin as this event will finally make mtgox irrelevant so they cannot cause any more damage and price manipulation. I have been wishing for this since 2011 - you have an exchange initially built on javascripts to trade magic cards, with incompetent management/developers, on top of being extremely dishonest. Mtgox has caused more damage to bitcoin over the last 3 years than any other person/event/company. It is a cancer. I did wish the price dropped more though so i could load up, after all the hoopla, coinbase base price went from $800 (pre-crash) to briefly touch $640 before stablizing around $700. All the drama for only a ~13% drop, really nothing to get excited about. I did load up a few @$680 then a bit more at $640 but not much.... I know the guys on btc-e lucked up with a big sell order, but in order to get that you gotta leave money in btc-e something i will never do, so no regrets. The bitcoin foundation needs to drop mtgox from its gold list and kick the **** out of the board. It is luring newbies into this exchange by providing a false sense of legitimacy.
Agree that no one should have money or coins held @ these exchanges unless they are full aware that the money could be toast tmrw, So risk only what you can lose especially in these early stages of bitcoin! Hope the Gox is going down because that was a bunk exchange anyhow. Hell I don't even hold more than nessasary in my futures or forex account at any one time because who knows if I get Corzined! Be Smart.
A bug in the bitcoin software that makes it possible to alter transaction details over the network has caused panic-selling among holders of the crypto-currency, sending prices crashing below the $600 mark on Monday morning. Japan-based bitcoin exchange MT Gox last week suspended bitcoin transactions while it investigated technical problems that had emerged during an increase in withdrawal requests. In an update today, the exchange says a bug in the bitcoin software makes it possible for someone to use the network to alter transaction details to make it seem like a sending of coins to a wallet did not occur when in fact it did occur. Since the transaction appears as if it has not proceeded correctly, the bitcoins may be resent. MT Gox says it is working with the Bitcoin core development team and others to mitigate this issue. "The problem we have identified is not limited to MT Gox, and affects all transactions where Bitcoins are being sent to a third party." MT Gox has advised other exchanges and wallet services - and any service sending coins directly to third parties - to be "extremely careful" with anyone claiming their transaction did not go through. News of a flaw in the bitcoin protocol which is being actively exploited has crashed the value of the crypto-currency, sending the price down to $539 per coin in early morning trading, way off last-year's year high of $1203. MT Gox has not put a timescale on a fix, reminding users that "bitcoin is a very new technology and still very much in its early stages". Comments: (5) Comment on this story (membership required) Alexander Peschkoff - TEDIPAY - London | 10 February, 2014, 12:15 Really?! http://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=8864 Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 thumbs up! (Log in to thumb up) ReportChris Dunne - VocaLink Limited - London | 10 February, 2014, 13:54 The press release from MT Gox identifies a possible fix - providing a separate transaction hash. That may fix this particular issue but the underlying problem remains that successful payment systems are built on trust, and this is somewhat absent in Bitcoin. Trust in bitcoin is lacking in three respects: confidence that the mining system will not be exploited by 'selfish miner' cartels; confidence that the counterparties are indeed who you think they are, and now confidence that a transaction will not be altered in flight. Bitcoin is a fantastic innovation but it is still a long way from being a stable transaction ecosystem
That isn't the complete truth... 1) there is no un-known bug (it's documented in 2011 on a Wiki-page, and the community of developers agreed at that time to solve the low risk problem in a procedure inside the Wallet-protocol). 2) Gox didn't follow the above instructions, and this was exploited by some hackers which managed to get some extra Coins from Gox (not from its users). 3) Gox now finger points (doesn't admit it made a wrong implementation itself) and blames others..... 4) The protocol isn't flawed, and no other Exchange is effected (except Gox itself). A better piece is here: http://www.coindesk.com/community-outrage-latest-chapter-mt-gox-story/ Now we all hope that Gox dies, and that the last clients can pull out all their owning's. And that there will be released a new USA based professional exchange soon (which will happen).
Coordinated bot attack at some exchanges now, http://www.coindesk.com/massive-concerted-attack-launched-bitcoin-exchanges/ Bitstamp has suspended withdraws for now. This is why you don't keep your $ or BTC at the exchanges unless you can afford to lose it. No risk , no reward
Yeh... looks like April-2013, when hackers tried to frustrate the Exchanges to manipulate the price down (to buy low). Weak hands will loose money... We can solve this if we implement Decentralized-Exchanges (It's clear that a decentralized currency cannot rely on centralized-Exchanges)