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Japanese Police Arrest Mount Gox CEO Mark Karpeles

McGruber writes with the news as carried (paywalled) by the Wall Street Journal that Mark Karpeles, who headed bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, has been arrested by Japanese police: In February 2014, Mount Gox filed for bankruptcy, saying it had lost 750,000 of its customers' bitcoins as well as 100,000 of its own, worth some $500 million at the time. A police spokesman said Mr. Karpelès is suspected of manipulating his own account at the company by making it appear that $1 million was added to it. The BBC reports the arrest as well, and notes that the coins missing from Mt. Gox represent 7% of all Bitcoins in circulation.

1 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. I'm ashamed that I never get sick of these stories by Brannon · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I take no small amount of delight that bitcoin zealots are painfully repeating the lessons that the rest of the world learned over several centuries; but this time compressed into a couple decades and punctuated by the laughter of everyone else.

    I guess it turns out that there are some advantages to government backed [inflationary] currencies with strong banking regulations & government backed insurance on individual accounts. But yeah, no, please continue "sticking it to the establishment" with your 133t cyber currency.