Mt. Gox's Stolen Funds Rejection Sets Precedent Concern

Mark Karpelès, the former CEO of Mt. Gox, made a failed attempt to rewrite Bitcoin's code to recover $5 billion in stolen funds.

In a pull request submitted over the weekend, Karpelès proposed a hard fork that would redirect 79,956 BTC frozen at a single address since 2011 to a Mt. Gox trustee recovery address.

The proposal was met with swift rejection from the Bitcoin community, and was auto-closed within 17 hours for procedural reasons.

However, the core argument against the proposal had nothing to do with sympathy for Karpelès or Mt. Gox's victims - but rather a concern that rewriting Bitcoin's consensus rules would set a precedent for future exceptions.