Mt. Gox reportedly dumps rebuilding plans in favor of liquidation

Shuttered Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox has asked a Tokyo court for permission to be liquidated, according to the Wall Street Journal, apparently abandoning plans to rebuild under bankruptcy protection.

Reasons cited for the filing include the difficulties of holding meetings with creditors spread around the globe as well as a lack of rehabilitation plans, sources told the newspaper. If approved, the move likely means that creditors will recoup less of their investment.

CNET has contacted Mt. Gox for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

Once one of the largest and most popular Bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox suspended customer withdrawals on February 7, claiming a fundamental flaw existed in Bitcoin that affected all transactions. The exchange filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in February after founder Mark Karpeles revealed that it lost almost 750,000 customer bitcoins, as well as 100,000 of the exchange's own bitcoins, as a result of a security lapse.

The reported liquidation request comes a day after Mt. Gox attorneys indicated that Karpeles was unwilling to travel to the US to answer questions later this week about its US bankruptcy case. A filing Monday said Karpeles was in the process of retaining counsel to advise him on a subpoena issued by a division of the US Treasury Department.

After hackers accused Mt. Gox of secretly keeping some of the coins allegedly stolen in the fraudulent withdrawals, the exchange announced it had discovered 200,000 missing bitcoins in a wallet no longer in use.