It is real - this is an internal strategy doc shared between the exchanges and other Bitcoin people with MtGox and it was never supposed to be public. Something has gone wrong with the plan.

Here is what i've worked out so far what has happen. MtGox worked out a while ago that they were insolvent, so they reached out to prominent members of the Bitcoin community to help them out.

The plan was instead of just having MtGox make a statement saying 'we are insolvent, no more money' they would team up with the other exchanges and come up with a plan where they could wrap that news around some 'good' news.

This document is the draft of that plan as it was being worked on by the exchanges and MtGox.

The 'good' news parts would be:

1. MtGox customers would be transferred to a new entity Gox

2. Karpeles wouldn't be involved

3. The new exchange would have old 'owed' figures from MtGox

4. The other exchanges would attempt to partially bail out the MtGox holders

edit: point 4.5. the Mt Gox closing statement would shift blame away from Bitcoin - which is important. MtGox has spent the last 3 months blaming on a 'bitcoin bug' what was a failure of their own accounting and auditing system. A lot of media bought up the 'bitcoin bug' story.

5. The other exchanges and Gox would announce all this at the same time on Tue 25th Feb

6. For some reason the exchanges did their part but Gox didn't do their part

7. Someone from the exchanges leaked this internal strategy doc that was written between MtGox and the exchanges to show what should have happen today but didn't since MtGox bailed out on their part of it.

We are now stuck in a situation where part of this internal plan has been implemented (the exchanges, gox.com being registered) but the majority of it has not.

edit: most interesting q's for me atm are: why did MtGox reneg on this plan (or have they?), when did MtGox finally reach out for help? and how long have these insiders known that MtGox is in trouble - there was a huge sell spike in MtGox coins days ago.

edit 2: note that outside of verifying this doc with somebody who works at one of the companies, since this doc was leaked and published the following has happen, as outlined in the doc:

* the other markets released their joint statement

* the gox.com domain was registered/activated

* trading halted

edit 3: you may have noticed slide 8 of the presentation is censored, i've managed to remove the black bars. It is details of MtGox's financials, image here:

http://i.imgur.com/Rb5MIcg.png

Google Doc version here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1miioFP1oFnLa8OQ1MZ91ABUD...