The world of bitcoin has been quite interesting since I last wrote about it. Although I had been mostly unsuccessful day trading with bitcoin, I continued to do so through the summer last year. I had some cash and bitcoin residing on the MtGox exchange, when I received some advice last August that MtGox's solvency was coming into question. I decided to be safe and pull everything I had off the exchange (at a loss) and put it back in my wallet. I left it there while we did all of our travels during my sabbatical in the fall. Bitcoin prices remained relatively consistent in the mid $100s during that time until November when it began a rapid climb reaching a peak near $1200 in December. The peak was of course followed by a crash back down to around $500 which still represented a nice profit on my original investment.
Around the end of December I noticed that the MtGox exchange was offering discounted trading fees for a limited time. It had been 4 months since I was cautioned about MtGox so I figured it was safe to resume activity on the site. I transferred some bitcoin to my account at MtGox and began trading again. I was actually doing well until early February when MtGox announced they were temporarily halting all bitcoin withdrawals. The rest is bitcoin history. MtGox proceeded to announce they had lost 850,000 bitcoins and were filing for bankruptcy. My unwithdrawn bitcoin are probably gone, but I remain hopeful that I will recover at least some of them.
I didn't lose all my bitcoin at MtGox, and in the meantime I have acquired some additional bitcoin to bring my total holdings back to what it was before the MtGox fiasco. But this time I'm resolved to just hang on to it until it's ripe for selling.
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