Mark Karpelès, the former CEO of Mt. Gox, is calling on community support for a proposal to recover more than $5.2 billion stolen from his Bitcoin exchange more than a decade ago.
On Friday, Karpelès submitted a proposal on GitHub to add a consensus rule that would allow the 79,956 Bitcoin hacked from Mt. Gox (currently sitting in a single wallet) to be moved to a recovery address without the original private key.
“These coins have not moved in over 15 years. They are among the most well-known and publicly tracked UTXOs in Bitcoin’s history,” he wrote.
Karpelès said that with Mt. Gox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi already overseeing distributions to creditors, if the coins were recoverable, the existing legal and logistical framework would distribute them to their rightful owners.
“I want to be upfront: this is a hard fork. It makes a previously invalid transaction valid. All nodes would need to upgrade before the activation height. I’m not trying to disguise that fact or sneak it through as something else,” he added.
However, Karpelès said the proposal wasn’t intended to bypass the Bitcoin development process; instead, it was an attempt to start a discussion with the Bitcoin community.
“The MtGox trustee has declined to pursue on-chain recovery, citing the uncertainty of whether such a consensus change would ever be adopted,” he said.
“This creates a deadlock: the trustee won’t act without certainty, and the community can’t evaluate the idea without a concrete proposal. This patch breaks that deadlock by providing something concrete to discuss.”
Bitcoin immutability at risk, say critics
Karpelès’ proposal saw strong opposition on the online forum Bitcointalk, with most arguing that it would set a bad precedent for Bitcoin, a decentralized cryptocurrency intended to be irreversible and immutable.
“Each time a hack incident [happens], someone will call for another new consensus rule to recover stolen funds. This will destroy the bitcoin concept in full,” wrote “coupable,” who has been a member of the forum since 2015.
“Bitcoin should be independent from what Law Enforcement decides in any [jurisdictions],” said another forum member known as “PrivacyG.”
Karpelès also acknowledged that this would be the strongest argument against the proposal, but argued that the specific case is different enough, as there is both law enforcement and community consensus that the address in question contains Bitcoin stolen from Mt. Gox.
Some who claim to be affected by the Mt. Gox bankruptcy were in favor of the proposal.
“If those coins ever move by whatever mechanism, then I am going to want my share of them back,” said Samson.
“I’m a creditor and have been paid what little was left of my Bitcoin from the bankruptcy – I got about 15% back… I would support obtaining a court order to claim these coins.”
A brief recap of Mt Gox’s collapse
Mt. Gox was once the biggest Bitcoin exchange, operating from 2010 to 2014 and handling 70% of all Bitcoin transactions worldwide.
Its global presence, however, made it a honey pot for hackers, who used weaknesses in Mt. Gox’s security systems in 2011 to transfer out thousands of Bitcoin, while other operational errors led to thousands more Bitcoin being “lost.”
On Feb. 24, 2014, an alleged leaked document claimed that the company was insolvent after losing 744,408 Bitcoin in a theft that was undetected for years.
The exchange filed for bankruptcy protection in Tokyo on Feb. 28, 2014, reporting it had about $65 million in liabilities after losing 750,000 of its customers’ Bitcoin and 100,000 of its own, worth nearly half a billion dollars at the time.
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