The former CEO of Mt. Gox Wants Bitcoin Rules Rewritten to Return $5B in Stolen Coins
Twelve years is a long time to wait. Of the thousands of people who lost their Bitcoin when Mt. Gox exchange collapses in 2014, the wait is over with little hope of getting everything back.
Now, the man in charge of the exchange is looking for an unusual solution – one that would require replacing Bitcoin itself.
A Proposal That Shakes the Foundation of Bitcoin
Mark Karpelès, former manager of Mt. Gox, submitted an official proposal to GitHub last Friday calling for a hard fork – a fundamental change in Bitcoin’s rules – that would allow about 80,000 Bitcoin, currently worth more than $5 billion, to be transferred to the recovery address without needing the first private key.
📝 Former CEO of Mt. Gox Proposed Hardfork to Return $5.2B $BTC
Former CEO of Mt. Gox urges the #Bitcoin society to consider a #network hard fork to recover about 80,000 Bitcoin. #crypto pic.twitter.com/xKUG2B0pAR
– CryptOpus (@ImCryptOpus) February 28, 2026
Reports say that those coins haven’t left the same wallet in 15 years, making it one of the most watched and well-documented addresses in all of crypto.
Source: GitHub
This is a protocol-level change so it needs to be a BIP before it is a request to change the code in the implementation. 😉
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) February 27, 2026
Karpelès did not hold back in what he asked for. He did not try to soften or hide that view. “This is a hard fork,” he reportedly wrote in the proposal. “Make a previously invalid function work.”
Image: it boltwise
His thinking focuses on the division that exists between two important sides. Trustee of Mt. Gox which oversees the payment of creditors has refused to pursue any on-chain adoption without some assurance that the Bitcoin community will actually accept such a change.
Not in that way. The court must order the thief to turn over the private key.
— Luke Dashjr (@LukeDashjr) February 28, 2026
But the public cannot weigh that idea without a tangible proposition in front of them. Karpelès says his GitHub submission eliminates that situation.
Critics say it opens a dangerous door
Pushback came quickly. On the Bitcoin forum Bitcointalk, members lined up to argue that this proposal would cause serious damage to one of Bitcoin’s most important qualities – the idea that a transaction, once confirmed, is permanent and cannot be reversed by anyone.
One user warned that approving a law change like this would set the template for every future hacking victim to demand the same treatment. Another raised concerns about foreign governments gaining influence over what Bitcoin can and cannot do.
That concern is not unreasonable. Bitcoin’s value, at least in part, rests on the belief that no single person, court, or government can access and move the coins without the proper key. Break that rule once, even for a compassionate reason, and the law is no longer the law.
Creditors Still Waiting After More Than A Decade
Mt. Gox was once huge. At its peak, it processed nearly 70% of all Bitcoin transactions that took place anywhere in the world.
Hackers have exposed weaknesses in its security systems since 2011, siphoning off thousands of coins over time in a heist that hasn’t been seen in years.
In February 2014, the exchange filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo after reporting the loss of 750,000 Bitcoin customers and 100,000 of its own – worth around $500 million at the time.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
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