The former CEO of the defunct Mt. Gox exchange, Mark Karpelès, has published a draft proposal calling for a one-time Bitcoin hard fork. The plan aims to recover 79,956 BTC (valued at over $5.2 billion) from a wallet address linked to the exchange's June 2011 hack. These funds, held in the "1Feex" address, have been untouched for more than 15 years, with the private keys presumed lost.
Karpelès frames the proposal as a narrowly scoped technical intervention, not a general upgrade. The suggested consensus rule change would apply only to that single theft address, allowing the coins to be transferred to a recovery address controlled by the ongoing Mt. Gox civil rehabilitation process in Japan. Recovered funds would then be distributed to verified creditors.
This proposal has reignited a core philosophical debate within the Bitcoin community regarding the principle of immutability. Proponents view it as a rare chance to return billions in stolen assets to victims of one of crypto's most infamous collapses. Critics, however, warn that altering ownership rules, even for a verified theft, sets a dangerous precedent that could erode trust in Bitcoin's foundational promise of an immutable ledger and potentially invite future interventions.
The proposal acknowledges the significant risk of a chain split, stating that a hard fork requires coordination with miners, developers, and node operators and could fracture network consensus if not widely adopted. The success of the plan is entirely dependent on this global adoption.
This development occurs against a backdrop of persistent large-scale crypto thefts. In 2025, $4 billion was stolen in 255 hacks, with the ten largest incidents accounting for over $2 billion, including Bybit's record $1.4 billion breach. The contested 79,956 BTC are separate from the roughly 200,000 BTC already recovered and being distributed to creditors through October 2026, adding urgency to the current debate.
