FTX vs Mt. Gox: the two great exchange collapses compared
By Dan Clarke · Updated 16 July 2026 · 7 min read
Put FTX vs Mt. Gox side by side and you are really comparing the two failures that defined an industry: the hack that taught Bitcoin its hardest lesson in 2014, and the fraud that repeated it, at far greater dollar cost, eight years later. They are regularly lumped together, but they failed in different ways, were punished in different ways, and repaid their victims in ways so different that the outcomes almost invert. I watched one from inside the industry and had my own money frozen in the other, so this comparison is not entirely academic. The fuller story of both sits in the Bitcoin hacks and fraud guide; this page is the direct head-to-head.
What happened at Mt. Gox?
Mt. Gox, then the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, froze withdrawals on 7 February 2014 and filed for bankruptcy three weeks later, revealing that roughly 850,000 bitcoin were missing. Attackers had quietly drained its wallets for years through a flaw in how it processed withdrawals. About 200,000 coins were later recovered.
The details make it stranger. Mt. Gox began life as a site for trading Magic: The Gathering cards, and at its peak the Tokyo platform handled the great majority of the world's bitcoin trades on infrastructure never built for that job. From around 2011, thieves siphoned coins gradually enough that the books appeared to balance, until they did not. The missing 850,000 bitcoin, roughly 750,000 belonging to customers and 100,000 to the company, amounted to about 7% of all bitcoin then in existence and was worth around $450 million when the exchange filed for bankruptcy in February 2014.
Nobody outside the company could see it coming, which is precisely the point. Customer balances on an exchange are entries in that company's private database, an IOU rather than bitcoin in your possession, and Mt. Gox is the reason that lesson is now industry scripture.
What happened at FTX?
FTX collapsed in November 2022 when a bank run exposed an $8 billion hole in customer funds. Its sister trading firm, Alameda Research, had been secretly propped up with customer deposits for years. The exchange filed for Chapter 11 on 11 November 2022, and founder Sam Bankman-Fried was later convicted of fraud.
Unlike Mt. Gox, nothing was hacked. FTX moved billions of dollars of customer money to cover Alameda's losing bets, a decision made by the people running the company. When a leaked balance sheet and a public falling-out with a rival triggered mass withdrawals, the money simply was not there. Bankman-Fried was convicted on seven fraud and conspiracy counts in November 2023 and sentenced to 25 years in federal prison in 2024, with an $11 billion forfeiture order. Senior lieutenants, including Alameda's chief executive Caroline Ellison, pleaded guilty and testified against him.
I had funds on FTX when it stopped honouring withdrawals, and the confirmation email for a withdrawal that never arrived is still sitting in my inbox. Millions of customers have some version of that email.
Was either one a hack of Bitcoin itself?
No. Mt. Gox was a theft from a company: outsiders exploited flaws in the exchange's own software to drain its wallets over years. FTX was a fraud inside a company: insiders spent customer deposits. In both cases the Bitcoin network functioned exactly as designed, and coins held in self-custody were never at risk.
That distinction matters when you hear either name used as an argument against Bitcoin. Both collapses were failures of custodians, the businesses people chose to hold their coins, not of the asset. The protocol has never been hacked in its history; the companies built around it fail regularly. Our crypto hack and collapse database tracks every major case, and the pattern is consistent: it is exchanges, lenders and bridges that break, not Bitcoin.
Which collapse was bigger?
By coins lost, Mt. Gox: roughly 850,000 bitcoin against the estimated 25,000 to 80,000 that vanished in FTX's shortfall. By dollars at the time, FTX: about $8 billion of missing customer funds against Mt. Gox's $450 million or so. Which is "bigger" depends entirely on the yardstick you choose.
There is a third yardstick that flatters neither: today's prices. The Mt. Gox haul, valued at 2014 prices, looks quaint; valued at any point in the last few years, those 850,000 coins are worth many tens of billions of dollars, comfortably more than FTX's hole. Scale in Bitcoin is always a question of when you take the measurement.
| Mt. Gox (2014) | FTX (2022) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it was | Largest bitcoin exchange of its era | Second-largest crypto exchange at its peak |
| What went missing | ~850,000 BTC (~$450m then) | ~$8bn of customer funds |
| Cause | External theft over years via a software flaw | Internal fraud: deposits diverted to Alameda |
| Detected by | Withdrawal freeze, then bankruptcy filing | Leaked balance sheet, then a bank run |
| Head of company | Mark Karpelès | Sam Bankman-Fried |
| Criminal outcome | Convicted of data falsification only, suspended sentence | Convicted on seven counts, 25 years in prison |
| First repayments | Mid-2024, a decade later | February 2025, about two years later |
| Repayment form | Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash | Dollars, at November 2022 claim values |
Who was punished, and how?
Almost nobody, in the Mt. Gox case: CEO Mark Karpelès was convicted only of falsifying records in 2019, received a suspended sentence and was acquitted of embezzlement. The thieves were never brought to justice. FTX's leadership, by contrast, went to prison, with Bankman-Fried serving 25 years.
The gap is partly about facts and partly about era. Karpelès ran an exchange that was robbed; prosecutors could prove sloppiness and false records, not theft. Bankman-Fried personally directed customer money into his own trading firm, and by 2022 US prosecutors had both the jurisdiction and the appetite to treat a crypto exchange failure as straightforward financial fraud. Russian nationals were eventually charged over laundering coins from the Mt. Gox theft, but decades on, no one has been convicted of taking them.
Did customers get their money back?
Eventually, yes, in both cases, and this is where the comparison turns strange. Mt. Gox creditors waited over a decade but began receiving repayments in bitcoin from mid-2024. FTX creditors were repaid far faster, from February 2025, but in dollars fixed at November 2022 values.
Run the numbers and the irony is hard to miss. A Mt. Gox creditor's claim was ultimately settled partly in actual bitcoin, an asset worth vastly more than at the time of the collapse, so the people who waited longest were repaid in the currency that had appreciated most (the trustee's deadline has been extended to October 2026 as the final distributions grind on). FTX customers received 100% or more of their claim's dollar value, a genuinely rare outcome in bankruptcy, yet anyone who held bitcoin on FTX had it converted into a 2022-priced dollar claim and then watched the coin multiply without them. Full repayment and losing out turned out to be the same thing.
The general rule holds all the same: exchange failures mean years of waiting for whatever a court eventually returns. The only reliable protection is not needing the court at all, which is a wallet and custody decision you make before anything goes wrong.
What did each collapse change?
Mt. Gox made Japan the first major economy to license exchanges and burned "not your keys, not your coins" into Bitcoin culture. FTX triggered a global regulatory acceleration, made proof-of-reserves attestations a competitive necessity for exchanges, and pushed a measurable wave of coins off exchanges into self-custody.
Neither fix is complete. Licensing did not stop FTX, which failed eight years after Gox under heavier scrutiny and a friendlier public image, and proof-of-reserves shows assets without proving liabilities. What actually changed for the better sits with users: hardware wallets are cheap and good, withdrawal is a five-minute job, and the case for keeping only trading balances on exchanges is now written in two of the most expensive object lessons in financial history.
Frequently asked questions
Are Mt. Gox and FTX the biggest crypto collapses ever?
By most measures, yes. Mt. Gox remains the largest loss of bitcoin from a single platform, and FTX the largest exchange fraud by dollar value. Terra/Luna's 2022 implosion destroyed more paper wealth overall, but as a failed protocol design rather than a custodian losing customer funds.
Was FTX worse than Mt. Gox?
As conduct, yes: Mt. Gox was a negligent custodian that got robbed, while FTX's leadership knowingly spent customer deposits, which is why one chief executive received a suspended sentence and the other 25 years. As a loss of bitcoin specifically, Mt. Gox was roughly ten times larger.
When will Mt. Gox creditors be fully repaid?
Distributions in bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash began in July 2024 and continue in batches, with the trustee's deadline most recently extended to 31 October 2026. Many creditors have now been paid; the long tail of unresolved and disputed claims is what keeps the estate open past twelve years.
Is money on an exchange safe now?
Safer, not safe. Reputable exchanges now publish reserve attestations, carry insurance funds and face real regulation, and none of that changes what a balance is: a claim on a company. Keep only what you actively trade on an exchange and hold savings in a wallet where you control the keys.