The embattled Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox issued a statement Monday to let users know that withdrawals will become available again “soon.”
The company plans to slowly roll back its suspension of external Bitcoin transfers with daily and monthly limits. To accomplish this, the company said it plans to re-index about 32 million entries on the blockchain, deploy a new NTX ID and implement a new Bitcoin withdrawal queue. More information will be available by Thursday.
Mt. Gox suspended withdrawals more than a week ago due to transaction malleability issues with Bitcoin. In short, transaction malleability refers to a weakness in Bitcoin in which someone could obfuscate a transaction by changing its ID before it is processed and registered on the blockchain.
Mt. Gox announced Saturday it had developed a workaround for the transaction malleability problem and could thus resume normal operations in the near future. Problems at Mt. Gox have shaken confidence in the exchange and have caused Bitcoin values to drop in the past 10 days.
You can read the full press release from Mt. Gox below:
Tokyo, Japan, February 17th, 2014
Dear MtGox Customers,
We apologize for the inconvenience caused by the recent suspension of external bitcoin transfers. Fortunately, as we announced on Saturday we have now implemented a solution that should enable withdrawals and mitigate any issues caused by transaction malleability (please see our previous statements for details on this issue).
Thanks to our friends at Blockchain.info, MtGox now has a workaround that will use a unique identi?er created by Blockchain to show whether transactions have been modi?ed or not. This will prevent any fraudulent use of the malleability issue and protect the assets of our customers.
Resuming Withdrawals!
With this new system in place, MtGox should be able to resume withdrawals soon. At the beginning we will do so at a moderated pace and with new daily/monthly limits in place to prevent any problems with the new system and to take into account current market conditions.
In order to launch the new system, we are going through the following steps:
- Re-indexing the entire Blockchain (approx. 32 million entries)
- Fully deploying the new NTX ID"
- Implementing a new bitcoin withdrawal queue that needs to be tested
We will update everyone again by Thursday at the latest.
Additionally, you may have noticed that we have added a new login system that sends you an email when you successfully access your account. This is an additional security layer, but as always we strongly encourage our customers to use the 2-step authorization options available in our Security Center.
Thank you again for your support, and we look forward to resume bitcoin withdrawals as quickly as possible.
Best regards,
MtGox Team