Mt. Gox's Karpeles Floats Hard Fork Recover $5.2B Bitcoin

Mark Karpelès, the former CEO of Mt. Gox, has proposed a hard fork to recover approximately 79,956 Bitcoin, valued at over $5.2 billion, that were stolen from the exchange more than a decade ago. The proposal, submitted on GitHub, suggests adding a consensus rule to allow these coins, currently in a publicly tracked wallet, to be moved to a recovery address without the original private key. Karpelès acknowledged this constitutes a hard fork requiring all nodes to upgrade, but argued it is necessary because the Mt. Gox trustee declined on-chain recovery due to uncertainty about community consensus. Critics on Bitcointalk strongly oppose the move, arguing it violates Bitcoin's core principles of immutability and sets a dangerous precedent for future hacks. However, some creditors support the effort, hoping to reclaim a portion of their lost funds, as they only received a small fraction during the bankruptcy proceedings.

(Source：Cointelegraph)