Cointerra, Bitcoin Company, Files to Liquidate in Bankruptcy

(Bloomberg) -- The bitcoin mining company Cointerra Inc. filed to liquidate its assets under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, following the bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox in declaring insolvency as the virtual currency falls in value.

The company listed assets and debt of as much as $50 million each in a Chapter 7 filing Saturday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Austin, Texas. No reason was given for the filing.

The value of Bitcoin in dollars fell almost 70 percent last year and has continued to plunge in 2015.

Mining, a nod to the excavation of minerals and metal ore, is entirely digital. The mining process gets increasingly complicated as more bitcoins are created, driving demand for computing power.

Speculators called miners use computers to solve complex software problems and verify transactions to unlock new bitcoins.

C7 Data Centers Inc. sued Cointerra Jan. 12 alleging the bitcoin company owes it $1.4 million for services rendered under a master services agreement. Cointerras total payments under the agreement through the end of the contract would be about $5.4 million, according to papers filed in state court in Utah.

Mt. Gox, once the worlds biggest Bitcoin exchange, sought court protection in Japan in February 2014 after losing 850,000 bitcoins, then valued at about $473 million.

Customers lost about 750,000 and Mt. Gox lost about 100,000 of its own. The company later found 200,000 in an old-format digital wallet. The exchange sought U.S. protection March 9 under Chapter 15 of the bankruptcy code, which allows companies to seek protection from creditors in the U.S. while the primary case proceeds in another country.

Bitcoin was introduced in 2008 by one or more programmers under the name Satoshi Nakamoto and has since gained traction with merchants around the world. The virtual coin has no central issuing authority and uses a public ledger to verify transactions while preserving users anonymity.

The case is In re Cointerra Inc., 15-10109, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Texas (Austin). The C7 Data Centers suit is C7 Data Centers Inc. v. Cointerra Inc., 2:15-cv-00019, Third Judicial District Court, Salt Lake County, Utah.

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Cointerra, Bitcoin Company, Files to Liquidate in Bankruptcy

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