Mark Karpelès, former CEO of Mt. Gox, has proposed a Bitcoin protocol change intended to recover 79,956 BTC—currently valued at more than $5.2 billion—stuck in a single, long-dormant wallet after the 2011–2014 attacks on the exchange.
On Friday, Karpelès submitted a pull request on GitHub that would add a consensus rule to permit a previously invalid transaction moving those coins to a recovery address without the original private key. He acknowledged the measure would require a hard fork and that all nodes would need to upgrade before the activation height. Karpelès said his aim is not to bypass Bitcoin’s development process but to start a concrete community discussion, noting the Mt. Gox trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, has declined to pursue an on-chain recovery because of uncertainty over whether such a consensus change could be adopted.
The proposal rekindled a long-running debate over Bitcoin’s immutability. Critics argue that changing consensus rules to recover stolen funds would set a dangerous precedent that undermines Bitcoin’s core property of irreversible transactions. Forum members and commentators warned that granting exceptions for high-profile thefts would invite repeated calls to alter the protocol whenever funds are lost or stolen, weakening trust in the system’s predictability and independence from legal jurisdictions.
Karpelès counters that the Mt. Gox case is unique: the coins are widely recognized and publicly tracked as stolen assets, and both law enforcement and parts of the community agree on their provenance. He also pointed out an existing legal and logistical framework—led by the trustee—capable of distributing recovered funds to creditors if on-chain recovery were possible.
Views among those affected by the Mt. Gox fallout are mixed. Some creditors say they would welcome any lawful mechanism to reclaim their share; others emphasize that court orders or off-chain remedies should remain the path for restitution rather than altering Bitcoin’s consensus.
Background: Mt. Gox was once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, handling roughly 70% of transactions at its peak. Between security failures and operational losses, the exchange said in 2014 it had lost approximately 744,408 BTC and later reported losing 750,000 customers’ coins and 100,000 of its own. The company filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo in February 2014. Since then, legal proceedings and trustee-led distribution plans have moved slowly to address creditor claims, leaving a significant stash of disputed and immovable coins on-chain.
Karpelès’ GitHub submission aims to break the deadlock by offering a concrete technical proposal for discussion, but it makes clear the change would only be feasible with broad consensus. The submission has reignited tensions between preserving Bitcoin’s immutability and seeking redress for a historic, widely acknowledged theft. Coin holders, developers, and the broader community will need to weigh protocol integrity against potential restitution if debate continues.
