Mark Karpelès

Mark Marie Robert Karpelès (born June 1, 1985 in Chenôve , France) is a French administrator and file-sharing operator. He was CEO of the online bitcoin exchange platform Mt.Gox . Karpelès uses the pseudonym MagicalTux online.

Career

Karpelès is the only child of real estate agent Anne Karpelès. Between 1995 and 2000 he completed school education at the Collège Prieuré de Binson in Châtillon-sur-Marne and at the Prieuré De Binson in Dormans . He spent a year at the Claude Bernard high school in Paris and completed his training in 2003 at the Louis Armand high school in Paris. His first professional position between 2003 and 2005 was the position of administrator and PHP programmer at the Cyberjoueurs developer studio.

He was convicted in France of stealing data from his employer, but the police did not have access to him and went to Japan. In 2009 he emigrated from France to Japan and founded the IT service provider Tibanne Co. Ltd. in Tokyo . There he also learned the Japanese language in a short time , which he had already rudimentarily mastered.

Mt.Gox

In 2011 he and Tibanne acquired the Mt.Gox bitcoin trading platform . Mt.Gox developed into the leading trading place for Bitcoins and at times handled around 80% of the global Bitcoin trade. After Mt. Gox stopped all payments to customers on February 7, 2014 due to alleged technical problems, the exchange stopped trading on February 25, 2014. Mark Karpelès returned his seat on the board of the Bitcoin Foundation .

On February 28, 2014, Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in a Japanese district court. Karpelès admitted at a press conference that 850,000 Bitcoins (market value over EUR 350 million) had disappeared without a trace. According to a statement issued by Karpelès on March 20, 2014, this amount was reduced to 650,000 bitcoins. Karpelès was summoned to a bankruptcy court in Dallas following a court order dated April 1, 2014 .

Karpelès was arrested in Japan on August 1, 2015 on suspicion of falsifying Mt. Gox accounting data.

Web links

• Karpelès' blog
• Karpelès' Twitter
• Mark Karpelès in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Burgundy: Le génie côte-d'orien qui fait trembler le net. In: Le journal de Saone-et-Loire , March 1, 2014, accessed March 4, 2014.
2. ↑ About. ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Tibanne website , accessed March 5, 2014. 
3. ↑ www.focus.de The biggest bank robbery on the Internet
4. ↑ 7 questions and 7 answers about Bitcoins. ( Memento of the original from March 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: asscompact.de , accessed on March 6, 2014 
5. ↑ Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox disappears from the radar - and the bitcoins of the customers. In: heise.de. February 25, 2014, accessed March 10, 2014 . 
6. ↑ Mt. Gox Files for Bankruptcy Protection. In: on The Wallstreet Journal Online. February 28, 2014, accessed February 28, 2014 . 
7. ↑ Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox is insolvent. In: manager magazin online. February 28, 2014, accessed March 6, 2014 . 
8. ↑ Information about the stock of bitcoins. (PDF; 192 kB) In: mtgox.com. March 20, 2014, accessed March 24, 2014 (Japanese, English). 
9. ↑ US court summons Mt. Gox boss Karpeles for Bitcoin disaster. In: The Wall Street Journal , April 2, 2014, accessed April 3, 2014
10. ↑ AFP / stdo: Head of Bitcoin exchange MtGox arrested . In: Welt.de , August 1, 2015, accessed on August 1, 2015.