Former Mt. Gox chief executive Mark Karpelès has proposed a rare hard fork of Bitcoin to recover 79,956 BTC lost in the exchange’s 2011 breach and return them to creditors.
The plan would modify Bitcoin’s network rules to allow the dormant coins to be transferred to a designated recovery address without access to the original private key, subject to adoption by the wider network before a specified activation block.
Karpelès said the proposal would apply narrowly to a single address and involve fewer than 50 lines of code while leaving general consensus rules untouched, framing it as a targeted measure to deliver fair restitution through the court-supervised rehabilitation process.
Under the proposal, any recovered Bitcoin would be managed by court-appointed trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi and distributed to verified claimants in line with the existing legal framework governing Mt. Gox’s bankruptcy proceedings.
The suggestion has drawn mixed reactions across the crypto sector, with some warning that rewriting the ledger could damage Bitcoin’s credibility and encourage similar demands from other hack victims, while others fear closer alignment between protocol rules and court decisions could erode decentralised governance.
Karpelès acknowledged the concerns but argued that the Mt. Gox case is exceptional given the coins have remained dormant for more than 15 years and are among the most closely tracked in Bitcoin’s history, with some creditors voicing support for exploring technical recovery options after receiving only partial compensation so far.
Mt. Gox once handled the majority of global Bitcoin trading before a June 2011 breach moved nearly 79,956 BTC to unknown addresses, culminating in its February 28, 2014 bankruptcy and a lengthy rehabilitation process that continues to oversee repayments to creditors.
At the time of reporting, Bitcoin price was $65,716.88.