Confidence in Bitcoin and the online platforms which allow trading between fiat and digital currency has taken a hit after another cyber attack on popular site Mt. Gox.
The Japan-based trading platform, which boasted handling 80 per cent of all Bitcoin trade in July 2011, is still the go to site for traders in multiple currencies (none are African), but the latest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is the third in a month.
The site posted on its Facebook page said: “This again appears to be another strong DDoS attack. We are working hard to overcome it and will update when possible. It’s currently 2am in Japan so please forgive us if our Facebook/Twitter updates are not as quick, though the tea, is certainly not taking any breaks.”
Mt Gox later went on to add they were looking forward to implementing a “much stronger solution very soon”.
Bitcoin has seen huge fluctuations in its value over the past month, at one point peaking at around US$260, but it has since dropped and at the time of publishing Mt.Gox had it at around US$123.
HumanIPO reported last week some South African merchants, mainly digital marketing and web agencies were starting to accept Bitcoin as an alternative form of payment.
South Africa, along with Ghana, Angola, Libya and Egypt, are the first African countries to have companies express an interest in implementing Bitcoin ATMs.
