Mt. Gox Ex-CEO Proposes Hard Fork to Recover 80K Hacked Bitcoin
Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès on Friday proposed a Bitcoin hard fork intended to recover about 80,000 BTC stolen during the Mt. Gox breaches. Karpelès noted it has now been 12 years since Mt. Gox entered bankruptcy and described the unresolved theft as "probably the last remaining sore point in this entire case." His proposal would effectively alter transaction history to reallocate those coins to creditors, a dramatic step that aims to close a long-running chapter of the exchange's collapse.
The suggestion is likely to provoke fierce debate: reversing theft via a protocol change challenges Bitcoin’s immutability principle and would need broad buy-in from miners, developers and node operators. Legal hurdles remain as well, since bankruptcy processes and court approvals may still be necessary to validate any recovery. Creditors, market participants and governance watchers will monitor reactions closely—any move could influence market sentiment and set a precedent for intervention in decentralized networks.