Mark Karpeles, the former chief executive officer of the once-largest Bitcoin (Bitcoin) exchange Mt. Gox, said in a chat on Reddit he no longer is a Bitcoin believer.
“The technology is definitely here to stay, but Bitcoin may have trouble evolving and keeping up. This say I could be wrong about this. I've been wrong about a lot of things,” Karpeles said.
Karpeles said he doesn’t own any Bitcoin and claimed he doesn’t want the billions of dollars he may stand to gain as a result of the company’s bankruptcy.
“I don’t want this. I don’t want this billion dollars. From day one I never expected to receive anything from this bankruptcy,” Karpeles said.
“I do not want to become instantly rich. I do not ask for forgiveness. I just want to see this end as soon as possible with everyone receiving their share of what they had on MtGox so everyone, myself included, can get some closure,” he continued.
Karpeles said he hopes to return all that money to the exchange’s more than 24,000 creditors. He said he doesn’t have control over the Bitcoins in the MtGox estate, but said he’s pushing for the trustee not to sell until a decision is reached for civil rehabilitation.
Once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange based in Japan, Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy in 2014 after thousands of Bitcoins belonging to customers were found to be missing. Karpeles, who had been running the exchange since 2011, was arrested by Japanese police in 2015, and spent time in jail.
By Jade Olafson