MtGox halts trading

Due to the large amounts of issues at MtGox caused by the recent influx of new traders to bitcoin MtGox has announced that they have suspended trading for 12 hours in order to clear the backlog and let things calm down.

The fill update (quoted below) halted trading at \$124.90 USD per bitcoin after falling from \$266 in less than 24 hours.

Meanwhile the second largest bitcoin exchange BTC-E is wildly fluctuating around the \$50 to \$60 dollar mark.

There has been wide spread talk and speculation in the bitcoin community that the centralisation of MtGox as 'the place to go' to trade bitcoin may end up as a problem, this seems to confirm peoples fears.

The MTGox exchange will open again at 11 AM JST or 2am GMT,  10 pm EDT, 7 pm PDT.

Mt.Gox Support
posted this on Apr 11 23:33

Orders will not be accepted for the moment as we need to upgrade our database to accommodate the trading volume. However, you may still cancel your pending and open orders. Trading will resume at 11.00 am JST. Our apologies for the inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience while we work to resolve this issue.MtGox Support