Recently Bitcoin exchange #1 site Mt. Gox faced a series of troubles like phising, federal's prosecution, etc. But despite all these problems Bitcoin prices are holding dteady. Almost everyone who is interested in the e-currency Bitcoin trades at Mt. Gox. It handles more than half of all Bitcoin’s transactions, with roughly $144 million in USD filtering through the system right now, according to Bitcoin Charts. It seems that due to legal, technological and federal pressure its traders are losing faith in that website as trading volumes begin to slip.
In the latest development, Symantec researchers discovered that a group of hackers had spoofed the Mt. Gox site and duped users into downloading harmful malware onto their computers — another in a series of attacks aimed at harassing Mt. Gox and some of its users (and perhaps stealing some Bitcoins in the process). A string of malicious DDoS attacks throughout 2013 have caused the website to even shut down a few times to stabilize the currency.
Beside that Mt. Gox faces some legal threat. The website has implemented tighter verification process on its traders, especially those who trade different to Bitcoin e-currency, in order to separate itself from recently shuttered Liberty Reserve and Mutum Siegellum (seized by Homeland Security for failing to register as a money transmitter). To crown it all Mt.Gox has been hit with massive $75 million lawsuit by Bitcoin portal CoinLab after partnership split.
Interesting, but Bitcoin prices remained the same and traded steady as if nothing happened at all. So if even the biggest exchanger will not make it there are about 11 different exchangers more to fill the gap and satisfy all traders needs. The second to MT. Gox biggest one is BitStamp with more than $27 million trades. There are clear sighns that despite any troubles Bitcoin has outgrown its own trading arena.