Tokyo District Court ordered liquidation to begin at failed bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, the company said on Thursday, after the bankruptcy administrator said on April 16 that it would be difficult to rehabilitate the firm, Reuters reported. Mt. Gox, once the largest bitcoin exchange in the world, filed for bankruptcy protection on February 28, saying that 750,000 of its customers' bitcoins had been taken from the exchange due to a security flaw in its code, as well as 100,000 belonging to the exchange. It also said that $27 million was missing from its bank accounts.

Mt. Gox customers with frozen bitcoin accounts are targeting Chief Executive Mark Karpeles, arguing in court papers he is unfit to lead the Japanese bitcoin exchange through its U.S. bankruptcy case, The Wall Street Journal reported. In papers filed Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas, lawyers for several Mt. Gox customers pointed out Mr. Karpeles has been accused of fraud and said he should no longer have power over Mt. Gox's U.S. assets in his official role as Mt. Gox Co.'s foreign representative.

A group of investors seeking to buy Mt. Gox has launched a website to garner support from creditors of the bankrupt bitcoin exchange to prevent a liquidation of its assets, Reuters reported. "We need your help to stop a liquidation, which would be good neither for Mt. Gox creditors nor bitcoin's reputation with the general public and regulators," the investors wrote on the website. Mt. Gox, once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, is likely to be liquidated after a Tokyo court dismissed the company's bid to resuscitate its business, the court appointed administrator said on Wednesday.

MtGox, once the biggest bitcoin exchange in the world, is likely to be liquidated after a Japanese court denied it bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, The Guardian reported. The company's assets will be sold off and used to pay its creditors, including those with accounts on the site. But any creditor will now recoup less than their initial stake, although it remains to be seen how much the infrastructure of the firm, as well as intellectual property including the MtGox brand, is worth.

Japan’s population slid for a third year with the proportion of people over the age of 65 rising to a record, underscoring the challenge the world’s most-indebted economy faces in financing its aging society, Bloomberg News reported. The population declined by 0.17 percent to 127.3 million as of Oct. 1, as the country maintains one of the world’s lowest birth rate. People age 65 or older made up one fourth of the total, the highest-ever percentage, as postwar baby boomers head into retirement, the Internal Affairs Ministry said on its website yesterday.

Two years before Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy, a half dozen employees at the Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange challenged CEO Mark Karpeles over whether client money was being used to cover costs, according to three people who participated in the discussion, Reuters reported. The question of how Mt. Gox handled other people's money - the issue raised by staff in the showdown with Karpeles in early 2012 - remains crucial to unraveling a multi-million dollar mystery under examination by authorities in Japan.

Mt. Gox said on Friday it found 200,000 "forgotten" bitcoins on March 7, a week after the Tokyo-based digital currency exchange filed for bankruptcy protection, saying it lost nearly all the 850,000 bitcoins it held, worth some $500 million at today's prices, Reuters reported. Mt. Gox made the announcement on its website. Online sleuths had noticed around 200,000 bitcoins moving through the crypto-currency exchange after the bankruptcy filing.

A U.S. judge who froze assets belonging to the American affiliate of bankrupt Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox Co. loosened that restraint to see where some of the digital currency flows, Bloomberg News reported. U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman in Chicago today revised his temporary order issued March 11 to allow movement -- and possibly tracking -- of small amounts of Bitcoin. Jay Edelson, a lawyer for Mt. Gox depositor Gregory Greene, told the judge today that he was “trying to find a pot of crypto-gold.” Greene sued the exchange and and its principal, Mark Karpeles, for fraud last month.

One of the Bank of Japan's more outspoken policy board members warned on Wednesday that too much monetary stimulus could cause problems for the economy in the future, even as the head of the bank said that it should stand ready to act again if needed, The Wall Street Journal reported. Board member Takahide Kiuchi, a former Nomura Securities economist, has been skeptical over the BOJ's ability to attain its 2% inflation target in two years and is wary of maintaining an ultra-easing monetary policy for an extended period.

Mizuho Financial Group is set to bring Japan's first overseas new-style bank capital instrument, testing investors' stance on the country's unique interpretation of loss-absorption rules, Reuters reported. Unlike other jurisdictions, where regulators prioritise investor bail-ins before injecting public money into a bank, Japan has legal provisions that could reduce the possibility of bondholder losses in the event an institution gets into trouble.