The real headliner this week is “What happened to MtGox?” And not to disappoint readers of the Bitcoin Weekly there is a summary of this week’s news as it pertains to the situation happening with MtGox.

For those readers looking for a summary of news and events not-MtGox-related look to the very bottom for a more concise view of some of the more interesting highlights.

Without further ado:

The Fall of MtGox

This month saw MtGox take its final teetering steps into oblivion with the bitcoin exchange freezing BTC withdrawals. But the real end came right after CEO Mark Karpeles resigned from the Bitcoin Foundation board of directors; a day later MtGox halted trading and shortly after that the website went blank.

Now a message displayed on the front of the page assures the community that MtGox is “very hard with the support of different parties to find a solution to our recent issues.” However, following the exchange’s all-to-common refrain of poor public relations it also includes that “[staff] have been instructed not to give any response or information.”

February 26th 2014

Dear MtGox Customers,

As there is a lot of speculation regarding MtGox and its future, I would like to use this opportunity to reassure everyone that I am still in Japan, and working very hard with the support of different parties to find a solution to our recent issues.

Furthermore I would like to kindly ask that people refrain from asking questions to our staff: they have been instructed not to give any response or information. Please visit this page for further announcements and updates.

Sincerely,

Mark Karpeles

This is the latest communication from Karpeles in a long line of news that has been building since Sunday. You can follow along by checking into previous coverage.

See “MtGox CEO Karpeles resignation from the Bitcoin Foundation a good sign for the community”, “Coinbase, Blockchain.info and other high-profile Bitcoin industry executives: ‘MtGox is insolvent’”, and “MtGox trading freeze and website closure aftermath continues [UPDATED].”

For the rest, here’s a short summary of recent events.

First, MtGox freezes BTC withdrawals, Karpeles releases a statement that the problem with Gox is related to a “flaw” in the Bitcoin Protocol. Bitcoin Core developers quickly rise to the occasion to state that there is not a flaw; it is in fact an old known characteristic that would only affect badly-written wallet software.

Sunday, February 24th sees the Bitcoin Foundation announce that Karpeles has resigned from their board of directors.

SiliconANGLE reports that Ryan Selkis aka 2bitidiot leaked an apparent playbook that MtGox is following called the “Crisis Strategy Draft.” This draft includes a number that cites almost 750k BTC missing from MtGox’s coffers and a strategy for moving and rebranding the site in order to escape from the crisis.

Shortly thereafter MtGox erases its entire Twitter history and the site halts all trading internally. Monday, February 25th, MtGox goes blank—not offline, but suddenly nothing on the site seems to exist anymore, front page is blank, old press releases now return a “file not found”-like error.

The Bitcoin Six, executives from six bitcoin-related exchanges, publish a joint statement decrying the fall of MtGox calling the exchange “insolvent.” However, many public drafts of this document are quickly edited to remove the word “insolvent” but retain a theme of calling upon MtGox as breaching the trust of customers who now have BTC and local money trapped with the exchange.

News is discovered involving MtGox’s parent company buying Gox.com—following the Selkis-leaked Crisis Strategy rebranding effort timeline.

Finally, MtGox updates its front page with a short message that the exchange (now shuttered) would “be closely monitoring the situation and react accordingly.”

A day later and here we are—speculation still abounds, Karpeles has contacted a few various news outlets, but largely very little information has percolated out of MtGox.

Erik Voorhees to and on the community

Properly predicting that mainstream media will get MtGox wrong, Erik Voorhees, co-founder of Coinapult and founder of SatoshiDice, headed to Reddit to leave some words about what to expect during the media fallout.

Hello friends,

MtGox is gone. So let’s prepare ourselves.

On Tuesday, and for the rest of the week, all hell will break lose in the media. It will be blamed on MtGox, it will be blamed on Bitcoin, it will be blamed on the “bug,” and it will, more than anything, be blamed on the “lack of regulation.” Pundits and “experts” of all types will weigh in on the calamity. It will be world news in a matter of hours.

Get ready, because it will be an ugly week.

It’s the middle of that week and MtGox is going to dominate every headline (even Bitcoin Weekly’s headlines.) As a result, while there will most certainly be yet-another-segment of the Weekly summarizing the MtGox fallout from this week, we will try to keep it to just one segment and focus on other news of note.

Almost predictably, he came back to Reddit to post an open-letter to the Wall Street Journal and Michael Casey for misquoting or at least misinterpreting him in an article entitled, “SHUTDOWN OF MT. GOX RATTLES BITCOIN MARKET Closure Raises Concern About the Future of Unregulated Virtual Currency.”

In spite of MtGox, Bitcoin soldiers on

Not-so-surprisingly, MtGox is not Bitcoin. The exchange has only been the exchange-of-note because of its position in the early Bitcoin market and sheer momentum and popularity, but the ailing of that exchange, freezing USD withdrawals, stopping BTC withdrawals, and finally shutting down has excised it mostly from the ecosystem entirely. While the market value of BTC may have fallen as low as $550 during this week, it’s also become relatively entrenched in that market band.

In good news for Cyprus, the nation just came out saying that Bitcoin is not illegal. “Bitcoin is not illegal, but at the same time neither is it subject to control or regulation,” sources at the Central Bank told the Cyprus Mail.

This is good news for Neo & Bee—a bank-like Bitcoin portal that opened in Cyprus on Monday, February 24th. Neo acts as the bank-like arm with Bee acting as the payment-processing organ of the business. Neo functions as a bank-without-a-bank by taking customers money in BTC or Euros and holds those like a bank; Bee functions on a bitcoin-based debit card system, replete with card and PIN, and allows customers to withdraw and use payments at merchants.

Robocoin continues to take North America by storm and is preparing to open yet another bitcoin-kiosk in the largest mall in America (note: it’s in Canada’s Alberta province.) “We’re really excited about opening Robocoin in the largest mall in North America–our highest traffic venue to date,” said Robocoin CEO Jordan Kelley. “The high profile location perfectly supports Robocoin’s goal of bringing bitcoin to masses.”

As of version 3.2.3, Fancy.com’s iOS app now supports buying interesting stuff with bitcoins.

MtGox news may be dominating the copy today due to its close-and-present nature, but adoption, exchanging, and use of the cryptocurrency has not changed very much.