Mt. Gox ex-CEO, who may profit from site’s fall, says he “doesn’t want this”

Enlarge / Mark Karpeles, former chief executive officer of Mt. Gox, departs following a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Tuesday, July 11, 2017. (credit: Akio Kon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

This week, Bitcoin's most despised man subjected himself to the Internet equivalent of a den of vipers: Reddit.

In a surprising post, entitled "I'm Mark Karpelis, ex-CEO of bankrupt MtGox. Ask me anything," the French entrepreneur spontaneously made himself available to all comers. (Even outside of this spontaneous AMA, Karpelis, under the nickname MagicalTux, remains active on Reddit.)

As Ars wrote a recent review of a documentary about Karpelis and the rise and fall of the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, the bitcoin exchange quickly became the world's most popular place to trade. Launched in 2010, by February 2014, the site pulled the plug and filed for bankruptcy. Mt. Gox blamed its huge losses on hackers who had pilfered 850,000 bitcoins (now worth more than $8 billion) by taking advantage of a major security flaw. At the time, Karpelis became the most hated person in the bitcoin world for letting it happen right under his nose.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments