Failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox was Wednesday placed in administration by a Japanese court, with an order for bankruptcy expected to be issued soon.

Mt. Gox stopped pursuing any plans to rebuild under bankruptcy protection, the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reported.

"The Tokyo District Court decided today to dismiss the application for commencement of a civil rehabilitation and at the same time, an order for Provisional Administration was issued and Attorney-at-law Nobuaki Kobayashi (Supervisor and Examiner under the Civil Rehabilitation Procedure) was appointed Provisional Administrator," a statement from CEO Mark Karpeles said.

Mt. Gox indicated the reason for the decision to give up were the complexity of the legal procedures involved, including the difficulty of holding meetings with creditors spread around the world.

It also mentioned the lack of any realistic rehabilitation opportunities, the Wall Street Journal said.

Whereabouts of stolen coins unclear

Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles wouldn't travel to the United States to answer questions about the bitcoin exchange's separate US bankruptcy case, the company's lawyers had told a federal judge.

Mt. Gox at one time reportedly processed some 80 percent of global bitcoin transactions, but froze all withdrawals in early February because of what it said was a bug in its software allowing hackers to pilfer 850,000 units of its virtual currency.

The company announced in March it had found 200,000 of the lost coins stashed away in a storage device not connected to other computers.

hg/hc (AFP, Reuters)