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Mark Karpeles Gets Suspended Jail Term

98 points| T-A | 7 years ago |bloomberg.com | reply

56 comments

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[+] MotiveMe|7 years ago|reply
As someone that still has Bitcoin tied up in the Gox civil rehabilitation suit, I feel justice is adequately served here.

Karpeles was clearly in over his head, and made terrible decisions after the hacking, but I don’t believe imprisonment would serve any meaningful purpose, and I do believe he feels genuine remorse for his actions.

[+] ckastner|7 years ago|reply
> but I don’t believe imprisonment would serve any meaningful purpose

Sure it would! It would serve as a deterrent. Some people shouldn't be handling hundreds of millions of USD.

Karpeles' operation wasn't just unprofessional finance, it was a complete shit-show. The court should have sent the message to others to not attempt something as complicated and risk-laden as operating a financial exchange without even the slightest bit of know-how necessary to do that.

Startup culture can be great, but it's amazingly dangerous when operating certain trades or industries.

[+] xorcist|7 years ago|reply
That clearly depends on the magnitude of whatever Mark has stashed away for the day when the personal heat is off him.

More than 100k BTC was "found" post bankruptcy IIRC, and only when the community started talking about where they were visible on the blockchain.

It is way too tempting to hide cryptocurrency, especially when accounting is a mess at best. We know for a fact that Mark traded on his own exchange and he must have known early on that it was not sustainable.

Remorse may not be the only thing that's important here. It must also be clear that white collar crime is not a business opportunity.

[+] xiphias2|7 years ago|reply
Of course he feels genuine remorse for his actions, just like a thief after getting caught. It still doesn't mean that the thief shouldn't go to jail.
[+] zubairq|7 years ago|reply
Having lost over 350 Bitcoins myself, I would say this is a fair verdict. Mark Karpeles was in over his head, that is true, but so are most people in startups or companies that end up hurting people or losing their money. If we were to start jailing people who lost other people's money then 95% of all people who take investment would be in jail.
[+] pakitan|7 years ago|reply
So, if you buy bank shares today and it turns out the bank has been insolvent for 2 years already and management was hiding this from investors, this is totally fine, as long it's not an established bank but a "startup" bank, am I understanding you correctly?

Mark was in way over his head but nobody says he should be jailed for being in way over his head. He should be jailed for defrauding people. He cooked the books and he hid the fact that MtGox was insolvent practically from the moment he bought it.

[+] pnongrata|7 years ago|reply
Big Banks and Wall St. are glad you think like that.
[+] gabbygab|7 years ago|reply
There is a world of difference between being an investor of a startup and having your money/property with a company. The former is an owner and the latter is a customer. Also, I find it odd that the top two comments are the same "over his head" and "fair punishment".
[+] tomc1985|7 years ago|reply
I used to buy M:TG cards at Mt.Gox back in the day. It was really confusing when I heard they were now a bitcoin exchange
[+] miles|7 years ago|reply
To those saying you could not have traded cards on Mt. Gox:

"sometime around late 2007, the service went live for approximately three months before McCaleb moved on to other projects" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox#Founding_(2006-10)

Gwern: "we know the mtgox.com domain had a landing page discussing a forthcoming Magic card trading site (because a 2007 page is in the Internet Archive), but we can't find any evidence that there was any actual trading going on. Did anyone ever actually trade card for card or money for card on Mtgox.com?" McCaleb: "yeah they did" https://www.gwern.net/docs/bitcoin/2014-mccaleb

[+] Kiro|7 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] RL_Quine|7 years ago|reply
Nonsense. The site never meaningfully acted in this way, it was at best a tech demo and a coming soon homepage.
[+] j-c-hewitt|7 years ago|reply
Someone should put together a crash weight loss program that simulates being convicted in the Japanese criminal justice system modeled on this.
[+] jaequery|7 years ago|reply
There have been other exchanges getting hacked after him. How come none of them get jailed time and only Mark?
[+] kabwj|7 years ago|reply
So he’s home free? If I were him, I’d be afraid that someone might want to physically harm me.
[+] Mengkudulangsat|7 years ago|reply
He is, all the time, which he shared on his Reddit AMA some time ago.

Might be worse than the actual sentence.

[+] topmonk|7 years ago|reply
A happy result for all involved. Karpeles was appropriately punished and all investors are being made whole. Most bankruptcies don't end that way.
[+] Nanocurrency|7 years ago|reply
I'm not being made whole. All investors that found out in time about the recovery process are being made whole; the rest of us - who haven't applied - are left with nothing.
[+] jasonzemos|7 years ago|reply
I'm still out plenty of money thanks to Karpeles that I'll never see again. Not a happy result for me, sorry, no.
[+] viraptor|7 years ago|reply
Not quite. Creditors get back all the fiat which was on their account. But they will not get a full refund of BTC. There's just not enough to distribute.

Also it's all in the future. The distribution had not happened yet and many details have not been published.

[+] colek42|7 years ago|reply
Really?, they still have about .5 Bitcoin of mine