Mt. Gox Temporarily Pauses Bitcoin Withdrawals

Mt. Gox has temporarily suspended Bitcoin withdrawals in order to resolve a technical issue, the company said on its site.

The statement posted on Mt. Gox, one of the world’s largest Bitcoin exchanges, reads:

During our efforts to resolve the issue being encountered by some bitcoin withdrawals it was determined that the increase in withdrawal traffic is hindering our efforts on a technical level. As to get a better look at the process the system needs to be in a static state.

In order for our team to resolve the withdrawal issue it is necessary to temporarily pause all withdrawal traffic to obtain a clear technical view of the current processes.

We apologize for the extremely short notice, but as of now all bitcoin withdrawals will be paused, and withdrawals in the queue will returned to your MtGox wallet and can be re-intiated once the issue is resolved. Customers can still use the trading platform as usual.

Our team will be working hard through the weekend and will provide an update on Monday, February 10, 2014 (JST).

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and ask for your continued patience and support while we work to resolve this issue.

We’ve contacted MtGox for more information. The increase in withdrawals may be related investor concern after Apple’s decision yesterday to drop Blockchain, the last Bitcoin wallet app, from the App Store. The price of Bitcoin has dropped steadily over the last day, and is currently $722.86.

Several investors and Bitcoin-related startups said, however, that Apple has taken a negative stance toward the digital currency for a while, and expect the drop in value to be temporary.