Update: The authorities halted this auction.
Mt. Gox is the Bitcoin world's preeminent business tragedy. The once-dominant digital currency exchange based in Tokyo imploded this year taking with it hundred of thousands of its customers' bitcoins, worth nearly half a billion dollars, alleging that they had been stolen. It's now going through bankruptcy proceedings. Its CEO Mark Karpeles recently told the Wall Street Journal that he has recovered 200,000 of those Bitcoin -- apparently the $120 million in digital cash was stuffed in a digital couch somewhere and forgotten -- but that he thinks the rest are gone. Karpeles also told the WSJ that he owned some urls that he planned to auction off to "to keep alive his other business, web-services company Tibanne, which was the de facto operator of Mt. Gox."
The first url -- Bitcoins.com -- is now going up on the auctioning block. The site is currently an explanation of what Bitcoin is, how it works, and how to get some. Karpeles hasn't updated it recently; it still suggests buying bitcoin at Mt. Gox. The site is being sold off by Texas-based Heritage Auctions; Texas is where Mt. Gox filed bankruptcy in the U.S.. Heritage Auctions and Karpeles are hoping it will go for at least $750,000. In other words, they think Bitcoins.com is worth 1,250 bitcoins. But you can't pay for it in Bitcoin. "As of right now, the payment will have to be in old fashioned currency," says a spokesperson for the auction house.
The bidding starts July 24 at $185,000. Karpeles told the WSJ that the bankruptcy "trustee would monitor the sale of the domain names, and any proceeds after Tibanne has been funded through the end of the year would go to Mt. Gox creditors." A press release circulated by Heritage Auctions quotes Karpeles: "We are hoping, with the sale of Bitcoins.com, to provide some relief to the people impacted by the Mt. Gox bankruptcy and will be putting at least half of the sale amount toward that purpose.” So he's hoping to pocket less than half of the sale amount.
“Bitcoins.com is absolutely the best remaining, and available name for this new market,” says Heritage Auctions domain names director Aron Meystedt in the press release. “Bitcoin.com, the singular version, is owned and used by Blockchain.info, the world's most popular bitcoin wallet, and Bitcoinwallet.com itself is also already tied up. For the right investor this is a golden opportunity.”
Actually, Bitcoin wallet service Blockchain rents Bitcoin.com. The owner of that domain is not publicly known.
There's some serious contempt for Karpeles in the Bitcoin community thanks to Mt. Gox losing customers' coins and his tone-deaf statements since then. It'll be interesting to see whether that personal dislike for Bitcoins.com's owner plays a role in the valuation of the domain.
Hat tip: Janet Novack
