Bitcoin Crashed From $17 to $0.01 14 Years Ago Today

On June 19, 2011, exactly 14 years ago, Bitcoin experienced a massive flash crash as it collapsed from $17 to below the $0.01 level as a tremendous sell-off took place on the Mt. Gox crypto exchange, now a defunct one. This reminder was published by popular crypto YouTuber Lark Davis on his X account.

Turning $100 worth of Bitcoin into $1.4 billion

This sell-off, which took Bitcoin a staggering 100% down the price scale, proved to be the result of a software glitch on the aforementioned trading platform. It allowed them to sell Bitcoin at negative prices, and eventually caused a temporary market collapse.

Davis said that that historical flash crash gave crypto enthusiasts a chance to get rich; if anyone had bought BTC at $0.01 for $100, by now it would cost already a staggering $1.4 billion. That would constitute a surge of 1,400,000,000%.

Similar growth is often experienced by owners of dormant wallets when they suddenly reactivate them. Whale Alert often reports that blockchain addresses that held BTC between 10 and 15 years see a massive price surge of their long-held Bitcoin and see their few hundreds or thousands of dollars turn into millions of USD.

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Mt. Gox completes payouts to creditors

In February 2014, Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange at that time, lost almost 850,000 BTC to hackers. It constituted roughly 7% of all Bitcoin in circulation back then, and it was worth approximately $450 million.

The hack was attributed to a vulnerability in the wallet exploited by the hackers, who managed to make consecutive Bitcoin withdrawals go unnoticed. This led to the exchange’s bankruptcy. Part of the losses was compensated to creditors during a period of 10 years. However, in 2024, approximately 200,000 BTC were found in a “forgotten” wallet, which hackers did not drain out in 2014.

Repayments started off in July last year, while the trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, was supervising the Bitcoin distribution. Creditors just got a partial recovery of the Bitcoins they lost. As reported by U.Today, in late March, Mt. Gox transferred approximately $1 billion worth of Bitcoin. Another large amount of BTC was moved by the now defunct exchange in December 2024. The payouts seem to be over as of now.