Glimmer of hope for creditors in MtGox investigation Documents also reveal that both police and accounting investigations are underway and that neither have yet revealed the cause of any potential losses, or even whether the coins are actually missing. Investigators have found "issues" such as incomplete customer transaction data that are hampering their work. Kraken has said that potential pay-outs to the 127,000 creditors could be made in Bitcoin, although no final decision has yet been made. "Provided the trustee decides to distribute Bitcoin, creditors may be asked to create a Kraken account, if they do not already have one, to establish a secure, efficient and cost-effective platform for the distribution," said a statement on Kraken's website today. Kraken chief executive Jesse Powell said that the outcome of the MtGox bankruptcy proceedings will "deeply affect the Bitcoin community as a whole." "We've decided to volunteer our resources and expertise in an attempt to minimise damage to creditors, restore faith in the Bitcoin community, and demonstrate trusted leadership in the industry," he said. Few details of the MtGox collapse have yet emerged, but many early adopters of the digital currency are sitting on huge potential losses. One Reddit user called fountainmass wrote earlier this year that he had lost over 10.5 Bitcoin: "Like many, I had repeatedly tried to get my coins out, even before the issues were "official." Support requests seemed to fall on deaf ears. All I could do was try, and try again. In the end, all I really had left was hope - the sort of hope that bloody-minded people have when they refuse to believe the reality of the situation. Now, the only hope I have is naive and childish," he said. In November last year MtGox users were having problems withdrawing cash, sometimes encountering delays of several weeks. Then, on February 7, the site officially stopped all withdrawals and claimed that it needed time to "obtain a clear technical view of the currency processes." Many people at the time had large amounts of money in MtGox. Although Bitcoins, like cash, can be stored outside of any institution, lots of users had bought coins through the service and left them in its safekeeping. Others had reserves at the exchanges as they were trading on Bitcoin's volatility. On February 10 it issued a statement claiming that it had a problem with "transaction malleability" - in essence, somebody could withdraw cash and then alter the ID of the transaction to make it appear that it had never occurred, then request it again. It called this a "bug in the Bitcoin software" but Bitcoin's developer community pointed out that the issue had been known about for some time already, and that it was less a bug and more something which needed to be taken into account by developers when creating an exchange service. Other exchanges popped up to say that they were unaffected. With information and withdrawals both unforthcoming, bitcoins held by MtGox were being bought and sold on a secondary market for less than 20 per cent of the going price. Optimism was not high that the site could resolve its issues. On February 25 the exchange suddenly stopped all trading and Karpeles told Reuters that the company was at a "turning point." A document circulating online purporting to be from MtGox suggested that 744,000 bitcoins had been stolen using the "transaction malleability" flaw, but there has been no confirmation from the exchange - owned and operated by Tokyo-based Tibanne - over its authenticity. This afternoon nobody was answering the phone at the company. If true, this would mean that someone, somewhere, had stolen six per cent of the 12.4 million Bitcoins in circulation worldwide at the time.