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Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange, suspends withdrawals in dollars

Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange, suspends withdrawals in dollars

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Mt. Gox chief marketing officer Gonzague Gay-Bouchery and CEO Mark Karpeles.

Mt. Gox, which processes around 70 percent of all Bitcoin transactions in the world, just announced it is suspending wire transfer withdrawals denominated in US dollars for the next two weeks. The company claims it has been experiencing unusually high volumes of deposits and withdrawals recently, which "made it difficult for our bank to process the transactions smoothly and within a timely manner" and caused delays for customers.

The suspension will give Mt. Gox time to make changes in the way transactions are processed, the company said. Mt. Gox also promised to debut a "dramatically improved trading engine" very soon.

Mt. Gox, which is based in Japan, has not suspended trading activity in any other currencies. It also has not suspended deposits in USD — meaning customers can put cash in, but not take it out. That's likely to arouse suspicion from customers, especially since Mt. Gox is being sued by another Bitcoin company for $75 million and has come under scrutiny from the US government. It also suffered a major DDOS attack in April and temporarily halted trading. The company was absent from the Bitcoin 2013 convention, where almost every major Bitcoin companies had a presence.

There is already speculation that Mt. Gox is suspending withdrawals because it is out of cash. Mt. Gox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.