MtGox: That missing £70m of bitcoin? Er, here it is

Bitcoin trader Kolin Burges stands in protest outside an office building housing Mt Gox in Tokyo. Photograph: Shizuo Kambayashi/AP

Shuttered bitcoin exchange MtGox has found almost 200,000 bitcoins which it believed were lost, according to the company's CEO Mark Karpeles.

The money was sitting in a wallet which the firm thought no longer held bitcoins. However, following the application for civil rehabilitation (a Japanese legal procedure analogous to bankruptcy), "these wallets were rescanned and their balance researched," says Karpeles, and one wallet was found to hold a balance of 199,999.99 bitcoins.

Karpeles says that the money, discovered on 7 March, was moved first to online wallets, and then back to an offline wallet between 14-15 March. After the discovery, Gox now holds around 202,000 bitcoins, and still says that approximately 650,000 bitcoins have "disappeared".

MtGox closed doors in late February, after blaming hackers for the loss of millions of pounds worth of bitcoin. Since then, the firm's US subsidiary has applied for bankruptcy, and two class action lawsuits have been started by users.

As every bitcoin transaction is public, it is possible to double-check MtGox's claim. The rediscovered wallet appears to be one which was noticed on 7 March, when it sprung into life after a dormant period and transferred exactly 199,999.99 bitcoins in two separate transactions.

However, there remains a minor conflict between MtGox's public statement and the evidence in the "block chain", the record of all transactions. While Karpeles says "an" old-format wallet was discovered, the record shows that the money was spread between five wallets. The difference is minor, but in the highly charged reaction to MtGox's closure, it is likely to be seized upon as evidence of untrustworthiness on the company's part