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by MagicalTux 1960 days ago
I am sorry for the situation and the way things and have expressed sorrow continuously, starting with the bankruptcy press conference, and on multiple occasions. I have been helping people who contacted me or who posted on reddit, been in touch with MtGoxLegal and other creditor groups, and generally tried to keep everyone aware of their rights and needed procedures to be into the bankruptcy. I also have made sure third parties wouldn't enter the process in order to benefit from it (see Brock Pierce for example) and still continue today to offer help on reddit to those in need.

I do not think me being involved in a new exchange would help make money for creditors. I have provided counseling to other exchanges who asked me to on how to avoid repeating what happened with MtGox and tried to push as much as possible for MtGox creditors to get as much as possible. When I was due to receive over a billion dollar as share holder in the bankruptcy I also made sure everyone knew about it because switching back to a civil rehabilitation needed the support for most creditors and wasn't something I could do (since I'm not a creditor myself).

But of course if I can help in something more I'd be happy to. You will likely receive more than you initially deposited into MtGox through the bankruptcy, but I do not know what you call "significant recompense."

Also most creditors I have been interacting with have been thankful for the help and I do not think that many people still direct much ill toward me, at least it doesn't feel that way anymore, but that may have to do with the lack of death threats and insults on Twitter and such. I'm hoping everyone will be eventually able to move on, but first the bankruptcy must end, and CoinLab is preventing exactly that from happening.

I have been choosing my words carefully, even going as far as avoiding voicing my own opinion here and instead linking to some fact checking from another MtGox creditor. I will however still say that CoinLab and more specifically Peter is clearly abusing his position and using stalling techniques to force MtGox and creditors to accept a settlement rather than having the whole process taking many more years, effectively taking everyone hostage for his own gain.

Staying silent will not do anything for creditors, and CoinLab clearly do not have creditors' benefit in mind. I do think this is important to point out.

4 comments

As a counterpoint, I would like to thank you Mark for what you built, and the movement you started. You did change my life and the lives of many others, enabling us to build the future. Lessons were learned by many. NYKNYC.

We cannot change the past, and we must build for the future. I think when the dust settles, you will be remembered as a pioneer and economy builder.

Agreed. Those who fell at the beginning are those who paved the way. Mark is a hero. Nothing less.
Is this coordinated image rehabilitation or something?

You authoritatively confirmed that the account is who it says it is as your first involvement in this thread. Was that based on firsthand knowledge? I’m really suspicious about your involvement here and I’m starting to suspect someone figured out just how easily HN can be leveraged if the commentary remains civil and lionizes the right people late on a Friday night when everyone is looking the other way.

People who rescue children from fires are heroes. People who make amends for significant errors, after aggressively trying to obfuscate them for many years, have some measure of retroactive integrity. There’s a difference and while he certainly deserves credit, he’s quite obviously manipulating this discussion in real time (I’m not saying it, but I’m saying it, wink wink).

Call me cynical, call me uncivil, whatever, but what you just said is a giant pile of the absolute worst excrement to ever cross this site. I’m not even involved in this drama, I’ve never speculated on Bitcoin, I have no ill feelings for this person, he cost me nothing, but holy Moses is what you’re doing here one of the most transparent efforts I’ve ever seen.

The more this back room stuff goes on in crypto, where we are all subjected to very public he said she said spats and expected to choose who’s our hero in this adventure and navigate who’s more full of shit, the less claim cryptocurrency has to legitimacy. I’m amazed that’s not obvious to you.

Please assume good faith. I do not believe there is a image rehabilitation campaign, nor are nefarious forces trying to sway public opinion late Friday night. Don't waste too many brain cycles chasing ghosts. We all are just people trying to get by in life.

There is no conspiracy here :-)

That eased all my concerns. Thank you. I feel better.
Rasengan is Andrew Lee, cofounder of London Trust Media, parent company of Private Internet Access. He has been personal friends with Mark Karpeles since well before Mark's fraud was discovered. Here's a PR piece he put out when he hired Mark as CTO after he was let out of prison. Yes you read that right, an infamous fraudster who couldn't even be bothered to use version control on MtGox who lied day after day for years and who ran his business into the ground and was imprisoned for it was hired as a CTO for a major VPN company.

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/why-i-hired-mt-go...

Rasengan has an obvious bias here, you can call that whatever you want but whatever you call it, he's not a neutral third party. I'm not either, Mark Karpeles stole a great deal of money from me and many others on this site. Rasengan has in the past given this same spiel on HN trying to make Mark out to be some kind of victim of circumstance.

>People who make amends for significant errors, after aggressively trying to obfuscate them for many years, have some measure of retroactive integrity.

At no point has Mark Karpeles done anything at all that could objectively be described as making amends for anything. Jed McCaleb previously indicated that Mark Karpeles was aware from when he originally made the deal for buying most of MtGox that the exchange was already insolvent. He lied to users for years and claimed that MtGox had a cold storage system comprised of 3 geographically disparate locations, of which access to 2 were required to move funds out of cold storage and 95% of customer funds were kept out of the hot wallets. In reality that never existed, and Mark just continually kept emptying the cold wallets that were just stored in their office into the hot wallet. The hot wallet was compromised in a hack, Mark knew the hot wallet was wiped out in the hack, he didn't rotate keys, he just kept dumping our money into a known compromised address and never once bothered to check just how much money was missing until it was gone. The only saving grace was that Mark was so incompetent and blaise with managing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of other peoples money that he quite literally forgot about 200,000 BTC. If he had remembered it, there's no reason to believe that he wouldn't have just kept dumping it in and push the collapse back by another 6 months.

Since the collapse everything's been in the hands of the trustee for MtGox and Tibanne. If Mark Karpeles told me the sky was blue I'd have to go outside and check.

Gox or Mark didn't steal any money from you, you lost the money you had left in the casino. While it might be true the casino lost it, it was no longer yours the moment you transferred it out of your own wallet. I'm sorry for your loss.

"I can’t give you your money, it isn’t here, it’s in Frank’s house and Joe’s house".

Thank you for posting this. I was aware of the bankruptcy press conference, though honestly (but perhaps incorrectly) perceived most of it as "My lawyer made me say this". I feel your message here which you posted even after all these years does convey true regret.

I agree with you on the idea of a new exchange. While it is a hopeful idea, ultimately I don't think that it would be very fruitful. In my opinion, it is about as far fetched as the idea of working with the US Government to get the feds seized from BTC-e to repay the creditors (because apparently the BTC-e folks were the ones who executed the Gox attack?). I assume you agree getting coins from the US Gov't is far fetched.

Thank you for highlighting CoinLab's (Peter's) actions. I am so very ready for the bankruptcy to be over, I can only imagine how ready you are to move on from it.

I appreciate the thoughtfulness you've given to your words. Please don't stay silent.

> You will likely receive more than you initially deposited into MtGox through the bankruptcy, but I do not know what you call "significant recompense."

I was one of those claimants who sold approximately the account value north of 1000 Bitcoins to bring myself in what I thought was a better position when all of your withdrawal methods were blocked. I attempted to withdraw BTC into BitcoinBuilder, but you guys had my account flagged for additional review from a previous TX I had made weeks ago. I had literally zero other options and you guys locked up all of my balance.

Some recompense could be given to now fiat claimants who sold all of their BTC holdings into USD _the day_ that Mt.Gox shut down. There were quite a handful of individuals who did with the same rationale this in the hours leading up to the website shutdown. I'm pretty sure they are the minority of claimant cases looking at /r/MtgoxInsolvency posts.

Today, the difference in market value those few hours for me would have been approximately been $7.9 MM vs. ~500k USD + penalties. There were zero guidance the days that you had your withdrawals blocked off, and any communication of what was going on especially in those few hours would have made such a difference in the 7 years that we/I had our money locked up.

Please look into these accounts that had this sort of activity _in the hours_ leading up to Mt. Gox's shutdown. If any group would be significantly impacted by any recompense, it would be us.

CoinLab is a joke. Calling his actions abusive is kind.