Former Mt. Gox CEO proposes hard fork to recover $5.2 billion in bitcoin from 2011 theft

Mark Karpelès, the former CEO of Mt. Gox, has proposed a Bitcoin hard fork aimed at recovering approximately 79,956 BTC, valued over $5.2 billion, from a specific address linked to the exchange's 2011 hack. The proposal suggests adding a consensus rule allowing spending of the unspent outputs from the address 1Feex...sb6uF using a signature from the Mt. Gox recovery address, enabling the funds to be returned to creditors via the existing court-supervised rehabilitation process. Karpelès argues the theft is unambiguous and the change is a narrow, one-time exception. However, the proposal acknowledges risks, primarily the concern that altering ownership rules for a specific address could undermine Bitcoin's immutability and set a precedent for future interventions in other hacks. These specific funds are separate from the roughly 200,000 BTC already recovered and being distributed to creditors under the ongoing rehabilitation process.

(Source：The Block)