Today, Mt. Gox announced the discovery of approximately 200,000 bitcoins in an “old-format wallet” that was untouched since 2011.
The discovery comes weeks after the virtual currency exchange declared bankrupty after losing around 750,000 bitcoins, the cryptocurrency that’s become incredibly popular-and valuable-in the recent months.
Mt. Gox searched through old-format wallets used before June 2011 and discovered a forgotten stash of 200,000 bitcoins. The find is worth about $114 million, according to the New York Times.
With the recent find, questions are still swirling about the accounting practices of Mt. Gox, which was formerly an exchange site for Magic: The Gathering trading cards.
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Bitcoins can be stored in two different states: “hot” and “cold” storage. Hot storage means you can access the bitcoins online for use in transactions and exchanges.
Hackers can also access the bitcoins in hot storage, making them vulnerable to attack and theft. Cold storage, naturally, means the opposite.
These bitcoins are stored offline, either on a hard drive that contains their unique identifying code, or even on something like a flash drive or slip of paper with the code written out.
As for the fate of the found bitcoins, it’s unclear. Mt. Gox still owes its users hundreds of thousands of bitcoins, and the discovery only accounts for around 25% of the missing currency.