Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès has proposed a controversial Bitcoin hard fork to recover over $5.2 billion worth of stolen Bitcoin held in a long-dormant wallet. His GitHub proposal seeks to add a consensus rule allowing the movement of the coins without the private key, aiming to break a deadlock preventing their return to creditors. The plan has ignited strong debate within the Bitcoin community over the principle of immutability.
Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès is seeking community support for a proposal to recover over $5.2 billion stolen from the defunct Bitcoin exchange. He submitted a proposal on GitHub to create a new consensus rule allowing the 79,956 Bitcoin to be moved from a known address without the original private key.
Karpelès stated these coins have not moved in over 15 years and are among Bitcoin’s most well-known transactions. He acknowledged the proposal constitutes a hard fork requiring all nodes to upgrade, but framed it as a starting point for discussion.
The trustee overseeing creditor distributions, Nobuaki Kobayashi, has declined to pursue on-chain recovery due to uncertainty. “This creates a deadlock: the trustee won’t act without certainty, and the community can’t evaluate the idea without a concrete proposal,” Karpelès explained.
The proposal has faced strong opposition on forums like Bitcointalk. Critics argue it jeopardizes Bitcoin’s foundational principle of irreversibility and would set a dangerous precedent for future interventions.
“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 one forum member. Karpelès conceded this is the strongest counter-argument but noted the unique consensus around the stolen funds.
Some affected creditors support the idea. One creditor who received only about 15% of their Bitcoin back stated, “If those coins ever move by whatever mechanism, then I am going to want my share of them back.”
Mt. Gox, once handling 70% of global Bitcoin transactions, collapsed in 2014 after losing roughly 850,000 Bitcoin. The exchange filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo, reporting liabilities of about $65 million at the time.
