Mt. Gox CEO Karpelès Reveals Details of 2014 Collapse and Japanese Detention

70 pointsposted 9 hours ago
by giuliomagnifico
(bitcoinmagazine.com)

39 Comments

kbenson

7 hours ago

Small nitpick with the title, because I still find it humorous all these years later, but it's not "Mt. Gox" like Mount Gox, it's MTGOX, which stands for Magic The Gathering Online Exchange, as it started out as a trading platform for that, and adopted bitcoin early as a way to facilitate trades of the cards without cash.

anonymous908213

7 hours ago

It was literally branded Mt. Gox. In the logo and everything. Also, he had already shuttered the MTG project and simply re-used the dormant mtgox domain.

gruez

7 hours ago

The Wikipedia page agrees with you as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox

anonnon

6 hours ago

There's some discussion about potential Citogenesis here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mt._Gox#Possible_citogene...

pessimizer

6 hours ago

> More importantly, McCaleb replied to my email. In response to my question "Did anyone ever actually trade card for card or money for card on Mtgox.com?", he replied "yeah they did". I've asked him some followup questions on dates & volumes & closure reason, but I guess that settles that... Does anyone recall the OTRS procedure for storing emails from primary sources? It's been years since I've last done it. --Gwern (contribs) 20:36 17 February 2014 (GMT)

ilamont

8 hours ago

The article mentions he was convicted of falsifying records. Kind of surprised Japan lets foreigners with criminal records stay in the country.

And:

At shells.com, his personal cloud computing platform, he’s quietly developing an unreleased AI agent system that hands artificial intelligence full control over a virtual machine: installing software, managing emails, and even handling purchases with a planned credit card integration. “What I’m doing with shells is giving AI a whole computer and free rein on the computer”, a brilliant idea, really. AI agents on steroids.

Like managing other people's crypto, it seems like an idea that could actually blow up your face.

mschuster91

7 hours ago

> Kind of surprised Japan lets foreigners with criminal records stay in the country.

Many countries have no issue with that, serving time is considered enough of a punishment. The idea of (especially mandatory) deporting of criminals is relatively new, driven primarily by the far-right.

IMHO it is unethical for two reasons - first, it violates the principle of every human being equal under the law because clearly non-citizens have a second punishment on top, second because in many cases (although not in this one) the target country isn't equipped to deal with serious criminals - that's how the US got MS-13 and other gangs causing trouble in South America in the first place.

anonymous908213

7 hours ago

Deporting criminals is in no way a new concept. In fact, it used to be commonplace to deport your own citizens, not just foreigners. The modern nation of Australia exists as a result of such a policy! Japan will certainly deport you for drug-related offenses or violent crimes, but like most places, white collar crime is not treated as "real crime", even though the impacts are usually more severe than a simple shoplifting or robbery.

Incidentally, if Germany had deported a foreigner who led an attempted coup d'etat, perhaps it would have saved tens of millions of lives. The things people get away with a slap on the wrist for...

killingtime74

6 hours ago

Nit pick, Australia was founded on transportation, not deportation. Australia was not a foreign country until many years after.

mschuster91

6 hours ago

> Deporting criminals is in no way a new concept.

Whoops. Yeah, worded the original post badly. My intent was that it is relatively new that this is a policy under active (and heated) discussion.

> In fact, it used to be commonplace to deport your own citizens, not just foreigners. The modern nation of Australia exists as a result of such a policy!

Which just proves my last point... it's in almost all scenarios really really bad for the destination country. The Australian Indigenous people have been driven to the point of extinction by that policy.

> Incidentally, if Germany had deported a foreigner who led an attempted coup d'etat, perhaps it would have saved tens of millions of lives.

German here. I don't think it would have changed much. Sure, Hitler was undoubtedly charismatic... but even the most charismatic demagogue needs a desperate populace. If it weren't Hitler, someone else would have risen - a lot of powerful interests were aiming for the final collapse of the Weimar Republic, which is part of the reason why Hitler got off with a slap on the wrist, and part of the reason why he did get elected legitimately a decade later.

user

7 hours ago

[deleted]

ilamont

6 hours ago

> Many countries have no issue with that, serving time is considered enough of a punishment. The idea of (especially mandatory) deporting of criminals is relatively new

Paul McCartney would like to have a word with you.

Not just Japan. For decades, SE Asian countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia have deported foreign convicts upon release and applied re-entry bans. It's not a new thing driven by right-wing politicians.

my_throwaway23

8 hours ago

Over 10 years of providing details and documents, but still waiting for my 0.75 BTC.

stavros

6 hours ago

Didn't you get it back? They sent me a portion of mine last year.

ggambetta

8 hours ago

I want my 5 Bitcoin back :_(

mrkramer

4 hours ago

The guy was running hosting company which sold web domain to the Silk Road guy and then the Russian dude who run BTC-e exchange hacked his exchange(which was by the way sold to him by the Ripple founder). This is like some cheesy crime movie. Tell me about Bitcoin's circular economy and his bad luck or to be more precise incompetence. This guy basically blew away billions of dollars of people's money not knowing what the hell he was actually doing or who he was dealing with.

wmf

8 hours ago

I think this article undersells his criminality; "falsifying records" is a pretty kind way of saying he covered up insolvency and massively manipulated the Bitcoin market.

pimlottc

8 hours ago

It’s a complete puff piece. Poor guy, surrounded by crooked and incompetent people. 80,000 bitcoin just disappeared somehow! Oops! Fortunately he’s sleeping better and shredded now. Love a story with a happy ending!

Analemma_

6 hours ago

PR campaigns to rehabilitate white-collar criminals so they can resume their activities are an old practice, but have been supercharged by the internet and the ability to use oppositional culture war framing to get people on your side. Elizabeth Holmes and Martin Shkreli are both out of prison and running big rehab campaigns, and Sam Bankman-Fried is clearly angling for a Trump pardon (see his mom's big open letter and all the submarine stories lately about how "nobody actually lost any money at FTX! what was the crime??")

It's especially big in crypto because the whole community has a conspiratorial "the System is against us" mindset, and if you can successfully tap into that and convince people "I was targeted by The Man, man" all your crimes can be washed away.

Chris2048

5 hours ago

AFAIK Elizabeth Holmes is still in prison?

rpcope1

5 hours ago

I like how this paints Karpeles, the Ripple guy and Roger Ver as seemingly upstanding individuals who didn't do anything wrong.

mvkel

8 hours ago

Time heals all wounds, even self-inflicted ones. I don't sense much remorse from this guy.

edfletcher_t137

8 hours ago

Working with Andrew Lee on vp.net, who maliciously imploded Freenode some years ago. Birds of a feather...

rpcope1

5 hours ago

Oh he's the one that caused the Libera split? How am I not surprised.

user

6 hours ago

[deleted]

optimalsolver

9 hours ago

"So you're telling me there's a financial exchange for Magic The Gathering players? How do I put all my money in this?"

-Someone in 2010

AlotOfReading

9 hours ago

As one of those people, the original meaning behind the name wasn't widely known. Plus, the dozen or so bitcoins I bought at <$1-10/coin were probably going to end up worthless, so preventing their loss wasn't a particularly big concern.

le-mark

6 hours ago

This was exactly the thought process too. If I could send 8 characters back in time to myself they’d be “BTC 100K”.

Loughla

6 hours ago

Dear Loughla,

Keep the Bitcoin. The pot you'll buy with all 10 of them is mostly seeds and stems.

From, Very upset future Loughla

mcculley

6 hours ago

A lot of people seem to still use the service that was first hosted at airbedandbreakfast.com despite an unwillingness to rent an airbed.

user

9 hours ago

[deleted]

djaouen

9 hours ago

Don't joke: I once knew a kid who invested all his savings in a company because he liked computer games; that company was Nvidia!

versavolt

8 hours ago

Indeed, obscene wealth is never funny

ekropotin

7 hours ago

That’s cool, but kids usually don’t have a lot of savings.

mothballed

6 hours ago

Passing KYC for a brokerage is also a challenge nowadays, especially if your parents have the paperwork.

When I was a kid I walked into a bank, opened an account with no ID and no parent permission, and that was that (I encouraged a friend to do it as well, their overbearing dad raged at the bank after he found out but even then it wasn't closed). Can't imagine that's even possible anymore.

Of course it wasn't that long ago there were bearer shares. You could just hand a kid a physical piece of paper, and that was that, they owned part of the company. Bearer shares were another thing eliminated after the FATF went on their sadistic attack on privacy and self custody of many forms of financial instruments, eliminating one of the easiest ways for kids to handle investments directly in their hands.

lifestyleguru

4 hours ago

Nowadays you cannot even digitally transfer 15k EUR from your own bank account to your own brokerage without answering invasive questions, 15k EUR which had been taxed at least once already. Oligarchs, dictators, high figure politicians, and white collar criminals don't seem to have problems with money transfers though.

mistrial9

7 hours ago

bet he won't return your phone call now !

djaouen

7 hours ago

We fell out of contact long before Nvidia blew up: hope he's doing OK!