A proposed class action announced Friday will seek $500 million in compensation for Canadians with deposits in what was once the largest bitcoin digital-currency exchange in the world.The lawsuit targets Mt.Gox and its two owners, Mark Karpeles and Jed McCaleb, as well as a one of the largest banks in Japan, according to a notice of action to Ontario Superior Court.Gox Bitcoin halted all withdrawals early last month, then abruptly shut down.Earlier this week, it filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States.The online exchange had already filed for bankruptcy in Japan, saying it may have lost bitcoins belonging to 750,000 of its customers.Karpeles has said computer hackers took advantage of the exchange's flawed software, a security breach critics said may have persisted for years.Toronto litigation lawyer Ted Charney said Mt.Gox held an estimated $465 million US in trust for its clients and millions of dollars belong to Canadian users.The company has offered no accounting for how much non-bitcoin currency it held or what happened to money that was supposed to have been held in trust, he said.

"We're never going to find out what's going on unless we start a lawsuit because it's the only way we're going to get access to the records," Charney said in an interview."It's really the only way to get the thing going."The notice of action, a summary of the case, gives lawyers a month to file a substantive statement of claim.The Canadian action also names Mizuho Bank on the grounds that the Japanese financial institution held an account with non-bitcoin currency that was transferred from the personal bank accounts of users to the Mt.Charney said his firm is working together with the U.S.lawyers who are pressing a class action south of the border.According to the Canadian suit, Mt.Gox had contracted to hold all money and digital currency deposits in user accounts.The national class action seeks to represent Canadians who paid Mt.Gox a fee to trade bitcoins or who had the digital or other currency stored on the exchange when it went offline.In Dallas on Monday, Mt.Gox lawyers said it needed bankruptcy protection to avoid irreparable damage from a proposed class action filed in Chicago federal court and a suit alleging breach of contract in Seattle.

The American plaintiff has secured an injunction freezing the defendants' assets and expediting discovery.lawyers complain the case involves "massive fraud."Mizuho Bank, one of Japan's largest lenders, has became ensnared in North American legal fallout from Mt.ethereum classic miningGox, once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, which collapsed last month after losing nearly half a billion dollars worth of customers' digital currency.Lawsuits in the United States and Canada represent a new legal front - and a deep-pocketed defendant - in the battle over Mt.simple python bitcoin minerGox, which claims hackers stole huge amounts of its own and its customers' assets.Mizuho, the core unit of Mizuho Financial Group Inc, Japan's second-biggest "megabank" by assets, was added as a defendant on Friday to an existing U.S.bitcoin faucet gratis

Gox for allegedly aiding in a fraud by providing banking services to the exchange.Also on Friday, Mizuho was named in a class-action lawsuit in Canada against Mt.Gox, alleging a lengthy security breach at Mt.comprar bitcoin bogotaGox resulted in "the pilfering of millions of dollars' worth of its users' bitcoins.A Mizuho spokeswoman in Tokyo declined comment on Sunday on the lawsuits, filed in Chicago federal court and the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.Tokyo-based Mt.bitcoin ticker nyseGox closed its virtual doors on February 25 and three days later filed for Chapter 11-style bankruptcy protection with a Japanese court.The company said it had likely lost all 750,000 customer bitcoins it was holding, as well as 100,000 of its own and 2.8 billion yen in cash.bitcoin aktienkurs

That represents $567 million of vanished assets at current market prices, as well as about 7 percent of the bitcoins in circulation.Mt.Gox blames systematic attacks on what it acknowledges was lax computer security.litecoin current valueCustomers - more than 99 percent of whom are non-Japanese - suspect a massive fraud.bitcoin jones gearGox filed for a U.S.asic bitcoin miner ukChapter 15 bankruptcy, which shields the company from lawsuits in U.S.courts as the Tokyo case proceeds.Mizuho held non-bitcoin currency on behalf of Tokyo-based Mt.Gox and its customers, according to the amended U.S.complaint by Gregory Greene, an Illinois resident who has said he lost $25,000 when Mt.Gox shut down.The U.S.suit accuses Mizuho of knowing of Mt.Gox's fraud, of not segregating funds that belong to Mt.

Gox from those of its customers and of continuing to provide banking services that inflated losses for bitcoin customers."Mizuhoprofited from the fraud," said the complaint.The Canadian plaintiffs allege that "all non-bitcoin currency received by the Mt.Gox defendants from its users was held in an account or accounts" at Mizuho.In fact, the bank by January was trying to close the exchange's account.An unnamed Mizuho manager at Mizuho bank, in a recording leaked on the internet, asks Mark Karpeles, Mt.Gox's 28-year-old French CEO, to close his firm's account with the bank, citing compliance issues and moves by other banks to cut ties with the exchange.The recording was confirmed as authentic by a person familiar with the situation.If Mizuho had to close the account forcibly, the manager warned, it could damage Mt."There would be confusion when your regular users try to deposit money.We don't think that's right," he says."If there's confusion, we'd come under criticism and you'd be in trouble as well."Karpeles

told the Mizuho official Mt.Gox was unwilling to cooperate.The Canadian suit was filed on behalf of "all persons in Canada who paid a fee to Mt.Gox to buy, sell or otherwise trade bitcoins" and all those who had bitcoins or currency stored with Mt.Gox on February 7.While the U.S.bankruptcy stopped American courts from issuing orders against the Tokyo company, it does not protect Karpeles, the parent company Tibanne or Mt.On Tuesday, the U.S.assets of those three were temporarily frozen by the federal judge overseeing Greene's lawsuit.The amended U.S.complaint said that despite the asset freeze, "evidence suggests" defendants continue to receive bitcoins in the United States.The amended complaint also added as defendants two executives of Mt.Gox, Jed McCaleb and Gonzague Gay-Bouchery.A Baker & McKenzie attorney who represented Mt.Gox in its U.S.Bankruptcy, John Murphy, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The U.S.case is Gregory Greene v Mt.Gox Inc et al, U.S.District Court, Northern District of Illinois, No.