At its peak, Mt. Gox handled 80 percent of all bitcoin transactions and was sought by hucksters, hackers, cyber criminals, drug dealers, corrupt federal agents, evangelical libertarians, true believers and tech wizards. But it collapsed in 2014 with almost $500 million of the digital currency missing. In this book excerpt, the authors describe the beginnings of the Mt. Gox exchange in Japan and the mysterious business dealings of founder Mark Karpelès.
From the Daily Beast:
Read Full Article »In its official statement, Mt. Gox said that the bankruptcy was related to a bug in the bitcoin software algorithm that was exploited by one or more persons. “We believe that there is a high probability that these bitcoins were stolen,” it asserted bluntly, blaming hackers. And since the company had a business plan that looked forward to 2017, it seemed unlikely, some felt, that its CEO had stolen his clients' money himself.
After filing for bankruptcy, Karpelès went on working at the same office in Shibuya. The number of employees was drastically reduced. There was a small coffee shop on the first floor that had been destined to be the world's first Bitcoin Café. Today, it is still just a café.
One of the former employees who believe that Karpelès did not act maliciously or for his own profit says: “He's a workaholic and a geek, but a good-hearted geek. He just has very limited management skills, a little hubris, and didn't pay attention to accounting. He was only twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old.”
