Mt.Gox Withdraws From Bitcoin Foundation Board of Directors
Mt.Gox is stepping down from the Bitcoin Foundation board of directors with immediate effect. The governing body behind the crypto coin has not disclosed the reason for the departure, although both parties recently had a clash over security.
The Bitcoin Foundation announced the departure of Mt.Gox on Sunday via a short announcement on its own site. The governing body responsible for the development of Bitcoin software does not elaborate on the reasons for the departure, but indicates that further details will follow later. Mark Karpeles, who served on the Bitcoin Foundation’s board of directors as the director of Mt.Gox, has not yet commented on his departure. However, all tweets sent by the Mt.Gox Twitter account deleted.
While it is not officially clear why Mt.Gox is leaving the Bitcoin Foundation board of directors, the cause seems to be a disagreement over the problems that have plagued the trading of Bitcoins on Mt.Gox for several weeks. The cryptocurrency trading exchange had blocked the ability to send Bitcoins to another address after a bug was found in the software. According to Mt.Gox, it was an old bug in the Bitcoin software itself, but the Bitcoin Foundation insisted that the fault lay with Mt.Gox’s own wallet software. The issue has not been resolved to date, and appears to be an obvious reason for Mt.Gox’s withdrawal from the Bitcoin Foundation board of directors.
Mt.Gox is still working on a solution to the problems that have been undermining Bitcoin trading since February 7. The exchange announced last week that a solution had been found, but it is not yet available to users. The company has moved to its old office due to a security issue, Mt. Gox announced on Thursday. Partly because of this, it is still not clear when the problems should be resolved.
With Mt.Gox director Karpeles, someone is leaving the Bitcoin Foundation board of directors for the second time in a month. Earlier, Bitinstant director Charlie Shrem had to step down after he was arrested for laundering drug money. Shrem is said to have sold more than a million dollars worth of Bitcoins to users of the infamous Tor trading site Silk Road, knowing that the Bitcoins would be used for illegal transactions. Shrem is also said to have bought drugs through Silk Road.