Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès ignited a fierce debate within the Bitcoin community by proposing a radical hard fork of the Bitcoin protocol to recover approximately 80,000 BTC stolen in the 2011 hack, valued at over $5.2 billion. The funds have sat untouched for 15 years in the address 1Feex…sb6uF.
Karpelès's proposal, unveiled on February 27, 2026, suggested adding a consensus rule that would allow the stolen funds to be moved using a signature from an official Mt. Gox recovery address, bypassing the hacker's private key. The activation would occur at a specific future block height, with recovered funds flowing into the existing court-supervised creditor repayment process. He framed it as a starting point to break a deadlock between the court-appointed trustee and the network.
The community's response was swift and overwhelmingly negative. The proposal was effectively rejected within just 17 hours. Critics, including Vypex CTO Eric Hall, argued it fundamentally violated Bitcoin's core principles of immutability and "code is law." They warned that creating an exception to reverse a documented theft, even a clear-cut one, would set a dangerous precedent, opening the door for future requests to undo transactions from other hacks like Bitfinex or compromised DeFi platforms.
Opponents also highlighted the immense technical risk of a chain split if the network failed to reach consensus on the upgrade, a scenario with historical precedent from earlier Bitcoin forks. The community's rapid dismissal was seen as a testament to Bitcoin's robust social consensus mechanism, which prioritizes network security and immutability over individual cases.
It is crucial to note that the 80,000 BTC in question are separate from the ~200,000 BTC currently being distributed by trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi to Mt. Gox creditors, with a repayment deadline recently extended to October 31, 2026.
