The founder of bust bitcoin exchange Mt Gox took questions on Tether, the future of crypto, and losing 35kgs in prison — here are 6 things we learned

LONDON — The CEO of collapsed bitcoin exchange Mt Gox said he will do his best to return the hundreds of millions of dollars of cryptocurrency to those who lost out when the exchange blew up in 2014.

Mark Karpeles took to Reddit on Wednesday to do an “as me anything” (AMA) session, answering questions from former customers who had lost out in Mt Gox’s collapse.

Japanese-based cryptocurrency exchange Mt Gox was once the biggest bitcoin exchange in the world but collapsed four years ago after suffering a huge hack, losing around 850,000 bitcoins.

Japanese bankruptcy law means that creditors of the bankrupt exchange must log their claims in Japanese yen. Assets of the bankrupt company are then liquidated to pay back creditors and any remaining funds will be returned to the company.

Bitcoin has surged in value since the collapse of Mt Gox, which held around 200,000 bitcoin when it went bust. This holding was worth around $150 million in 2014 but is worth $1.35 billion today.

This means bankruptcy administrators could sell just a fraction of its holdings to repay those lodged claims in yen shortly after the collapse. The remaining bitcoin would be returned to Mt Gox, which is majority owned by Mark Karpeles.

This has angered many of Mt Gox’s 24,000 former customers, who will be unable to benefit from the rise in bitcoin’s price and feel it is unfair that Karpeles instead will reap the benefit.

Karpeles, who was CEO of Mt Gox at the time of its collapse, took to Reddit on Wednesday to insist: “I don’t want this billion dollars. From day one I never expected to receive anything from this bankruptcy.”

He called the situation “an egregiously distasteful outcome” and said: “I just want to see this end as soon as possible with everyone receiving their share of what they had on MtGox so everyone, myself included, can get some closure.”

Karpeles declarations were part of an AMA (as me anything) session on Reddit on Wednesday. Here are the key takeaways from his long discussion session: