¡°Imagine someone stole everything in your store and you reported the crime to the police,¡± says Nobuyasu Ogata, defense lawyer for Mark Karpeles. Karpeles, 33, is the former CEO of Mt. Gox, once the largest bitcoin exchange in the world.
¡°A year later,¡± Ogata says, ¡°the police suddenly arrest you for breach of trust, don¡¯t recover the stolen merchandise and let the criminal go free. That¡¯s essentially what happened with Mt. Gox.¡±
In February 2014, Karpeles discovered the exchange was missing 850,000 bitcoins (around $480 million at the time). It didn¡¯t take long for the information to become public, with Mt. Gox eventually filing for bankruptcy on Feb. 28.
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