Mt Gox ex-CEO Mark Karpeles ‘Starting from Zero’ with a New Blockchain Project
Being cleared from the majority of accusations, Mark Karpeles, ex-CEO of the Mt. Gox exchange, will serve as the CTO of a new blockchain tech firm.
By Julia SakovichUpdated
3 mins readPhoto: Pavlos Giorkas / Flickr
As it was revealed by the Japanese media, Mark Karpeles who is known as the former CEO of the Mt. Gox exchange, would serve as the chief technology officer of a new Japan-based blockchain technology firm.
Not so long ago Mark Karpeles managed to escape most charges in a court case related to the collapse of BTC exchange Mt. Gox. But now, as he noted, he is ready to start from zero.
Starting from Zero
Speaking to the media, Karpeles revealed the specificity of his new startup. The new project will work on the development of a secure operating system based on blockchain. According to Karpeles, this system will seriously outdo the existing systems in terms of speed.
The company was registered in Japan under the name Tristan Technologies Co.
With his words, Karpeles was clearly trying to repair his reputation in the country. He expressed his hopes that with the new tech Japan will manage to return its leading positions on the global tech arena after U.S. giants like Apple, Amazon and Facebook replaced it from its throne in the recent decades.
“Japan used to be engineering superpower in terms of its PCs but right now, taking the cloud for example, it’s the U.S. that dominates. But I still believe in the potential Japan has and I would like to develop that.”
Karpeles also highlighted that despite all the situations that he had faced in the country before his love for Japan did not change.
The former Mt. Gox CEO also indicated that he currently does not hold any cryptocurrencies. He also noted that digital currencies are a high-risk asset. “I wouldn’t say I’m rich today,” he said. However, he still believes in that blockchain is able to bring innovations to cashless payments, as well as to cloud solutions.
Mt. Gox Story
Let us remind you that being interested in Japanese animation and games Karpeles moved to Japan in 2009. In 2011, he acquired the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange site.
After Mt. Gox’s hack which resulted in its collapse in early 2014, Karpeles was arrested in 2015 and spent 11 months in detention. In that incident, that made a lot of headlines at that time, 850,000 BTC was lost. In accordance with the exchange rate of those days, it was roughly $460 million.
The ex-CEO of the now-defunct exchange Mt. Gox was accused of Bitcoin embezzlement and fraud. The prosecutors had demanded the Japanese court to charge Mark Karpeles a minimum 10-year jail term under all those charges. Later the majority of charges were dropped. Nevertheless, he was still found guilty on one of them: producing illegal records. But he was lucky to avoid jail time as he has received a suspended sentence which provided him a possibility to move further.
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