
Mark Karpelès, ex-CEO MtGox – AMA - Stjerrild
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/89o16y/im_mark_karpel%C3%A8s_exceo_of_bankrupt_mtgox_ask_me/?st=JFL67ETU&sh=202cdb9c
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boffinism
> Japanese bankruptcy law has a particularly nasty outcome here, and I want to
> address this up front. As creditors claims were registered, those claims
> were registered in the valuation of Japanese Yen on the bankruptcy date.
> That's the only way Japanese bankruptcy law can work (most bankruptcy laws
> around the world operate this way for that matter). This means that the
> claims can be paid back in full, and there will still be over 160,000
> bitcoin and bitcoin cash in assets in the Gox estate. The way bankruptcy law
> works is that if there are any assets remaining after the creditors have
> been paid in full, then those assets are distributed to shareholders as part
> of the liquidation.

> That's the only way any bankruptcy law can reasonably work. And yet, in this
> case, it produces an egregiously distasteful outcome in that the
> shareholders of MtGox would walk away with the value of over 160,000 bitcoin
> as a result of what happened.

Hilarity ensues.

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stephenboyd
That's amazing. He screwed up and lost so much of the customers' money the
company so much they had to go into bankruptcy, which pegged the company's
debts at the bitcoin-to-yen rate of 2014. The company has over 200,000
bitcoins.

So the rise in value of bitcoin has made Mt Gox extremely valuable in
bankruptcy (possibly more valuable than if it were properly managed from the
beginning) and now Mark Karpeles is a billionaire. Is that a correct
understanding?

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pera
That's just for the bankruptcy case. There are other cases/class actions on
the way.

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piker
Bankruptcy in the US (which is of course different than Japanese bankruptcy)
may discharge those contingent liabilities as well, IIRC from law school.

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orliesaurus
I wonder how many people want to find this guy for personal vendetta's. His
life must be a living hell

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freehunter
To me the lesson from all of this is, this is why financial regulations exist.
Many nations have gone through this same thing with their own currencies, and
the end result is something like the US FDIC, where properly regulated banks
have their balances backed up by the federal government and if the bank goes
out of business everyone gets their money back.

Many people I know who are opposed to this kind of regulatory structure have
invested in some way in BitCoin due to their lack of regulatory structure, and
some of them have been burned by it.

You can hate the guy for his mistakes, but ultimately this would have been far
less likely to happen with a stable currency backed up by a stable regulatory
body.

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XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
It's ironic because cryptocurrencies were made to eliminate third party risk.

Another take away from mtgox was to keep your coins on your local, not on an
exchange.

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JustAnotherPat
I don't really understand his sentiment. It's not like he's stealing a billion
dollars from charity. The people who lost out will get their money. They were
speculators at the end of the day, and I don't really have much sympathy for
them with regard to their loses of 10x gains.

I guess he might still be facing jail time or threats from the the community,
so he has to put on some type of sympathetic face.

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ganeshkrishnan
Is coinjar related in anyway to mtGox?

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shrikant
Interesting that he makes an AMA appearance, roughly a month after the BBC
File on 4 (top quality investigatory journalism) piece:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09tdyjz](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09tdyjz)

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Obi_Juan_Kenobi
He's been active on Reddit for years (he deleted history). Doing the AMA is
related to the recent actions of the trustees to liquidate a large portion of
Bitcoin. The amount liquidated is apparently enough to reimburse account
holders with the USD value of the BTC lost at the time. Mark has no control
over the trustee actions.

The details of the liquidation are unclear. It's reported that they weren't
sold directly on the market, but nevertheless extra supply has almost
certainly had a dramatic effect on Bitcoin price. It's one of very a few
examples of a particular action/event having a direct impact on price.

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Exuma
[https://i.redd.it/l578yxh3c3xz.jpg](https://i.redd.it/l578yxh3c3xz.jpg)

