Ex-Mt. Gox CEO To Face US Class Action Lawsuit Over Exchanges Collapse

When Mt. Gox was hacked, hundreds of investors were left out of pocket and at a loss for words. The man behind the operation, Mark Karpeles is now as disgraced as the exchange but that hasn’t stopped him announcing some new plans for the future of his time in the blockchain space.

Karpelès has had a rough time since the exchange lost almost 800,000 Bitcoins in 2014 as he has had to appear in court on multiple occasions in regards to the case. Karpelès is now going to have to face a class-action in Philadelphia about the firm’s infamous crash five years ago.

This comes after District Judge Robert Kelly threw out the ex-CEO’s request to dismiss the suit, which alleges he hid problems at the exchange from its users according to reports.

As reported by The Next Web:

“By 2013 and into 2014, Mt. Gox was reportedly handling more than 70 percent of all Bitcoin transactions worldwide. When the company collapsed in early 2014, it said it lost almost 750,000 of its customers‘ Bitcoins, as well as around 100,000 of its own coins, a total sum of approximately $473 million near the time of the filing.”

The case was brought forward by a former customer of Mt. Gox, Gregory Pearce, who represented himself as well as the other victims that were impacted due to the failure of the exchange.

Submitted to the court were documents where Pearce claimed Karpelès was aware of “security bugs in the system but did not make these defects known to the public.”

Karpelès has been involved in multiple lawsuits over the years. In 2019 alone, the Frenchman said he would appeal a court ruling which found him guilty of manipulating the financial records of his embattled cryptocurrency exchange to conceal its huge losses which left it bankrupt.

What will Karpelès do next?

There aren’t a lot of details out there on Karpelès’ next step in the blockchain space but we do know that he aims to make Japan a “global leader in blockchain.”

In fact, the Frenchman has also written a book which got published earlier this year called Cryptocurrency 3.0. The publishers of the book say that Karpeles is a genius who was proved ‘clean’.

(The following is translated from Japanese):

“This book is the definitive guide written for the first time by a man who is the best in the world in virtual currency… The first book of a genius programmer who proved “clean.”

Considering Karpelès’ history in the crypto space, trust is going to be a big factor indeed.