Mark Karpelès, ex-CEO of the collapsed Japanese crypto giant Mt. Gox, is proposing a Bitcoin hard fork that could unlock nearly 80,000 BTC — worth more than $5.2 billion— from a long-dormant address linked to the notorious 2011 hack.
Mt. Gox’s Stolen Bitcoin Lies Dormant for 15 Years
On Feb. 27, Mark Karpelès submitted a GitHub proposal to introduce a new Bitcoin consensus rule that would enable the 79,956 BTC stolen from Mt. Gox—currently held in a single dormant wallet—to be transferred to a recovery address without needing the original private key.
The proposal focuses on the address 1Feex…sb6uF, which received the Bitcoin loot after Mt. Gox’s systems were compromised in June 2011. The coins have remained untouched for over 15 years, hinting that the hacker may have lost the private keys—or simply chosen not to move or return the funds.
“These coins have not moved in over 15 years. They are among the most well-known and publicly tracked UTXOs in Bitcoin’s history,” Karpelès wrote.
Under Bitcoin’s current rules, the stolen funds can only be moved with the original private key. Karpelès’ proposal seeks to “add a consensus rule that allows spending the unspent outputs locked to the theft address using a signature from the Mt. Gox recovery address, so that the funds can be returned to Mt.Gox creditors through the existing court-supervised rehabilitation process.”
Karpelès presents the draft as a conversation starter, describing it as “an attempt to start a discussion about whether the Bitcoin community considers this specific, exceptional case worth addressing.” The former Mt. Gox boss emphasizes that the proposed fork would apply only to this single address and would take effect at a future block height if approved by the network.
“I want to be upfront: this is a hard fork. It makes a previously invalid transaction valid. All nodes would need to upgrade before the activation height. I’m not trying to disguise that fact or sneak it through as something else,” he continued.
Risks of a Potential Hard Fork
The proposal also recognizes significant risks. Chief among them is the worry that altering ownership rules for a single address could set a precedent, potentially endangering Bitcoin’s core principle of immutability.
“If it can be done once, the argument goes, it can be done again,” the draft explains.
It also sparks a bigger debate: who should decide which hacks are special enough to modify Bitcoin’s rules, and could this open the door for other major crypto thefts to demand similar treatment?
Karpelès also acknowledges that coordinating a hard fork carries risks, including the potential for a chain split if some nodes in the network refuse to upgrade.
After Mt. Gox’s 2014 failure, about 200,000 BTC were eventually recovered and placed under the control of court-appointed trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi — kick-starting creditor repayments in mid-2024.
As ZyCrypto reported, Kobayashi has pushed creditor repayments to October 2026 — this marks the third extension in the saga.
Source: https://zycrypto.com/how-mt-goxs-former-boss-plans-to-retrieve-80000-bitcoin-stolen-in-2011-via-hard-fork/
