Ex-CEO of Mt. Gox, Mark Karpeles Works on a Cloud Project (UPDATED 1)

Mark Karpeles, the founder of the infamous, fallen Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox is working on a new project in Japan.
(Updated on June 7: updates in bold)

His company aims to create a new, secure operating system that is much faster than those currently in use, Karpeles told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan today, according to the Associated Press. According to the report, Karpeles also said that “he wants to make Japan a global leader in blockchain” and he believes that blockchain is useful for cashless payments, cloud solutions and smart contracts.

He claims that he has no cryptocurrencies now.

“I wouldn’t say I’m rich today,” Karpeles said adding that he was starting over “from zero.”

Later, Karpeles said that the Associated Press mistakenly reported he had a “new bitcoin tech business.” He told the Block that Tristan Technologies, that has been around for nearly three years, is working on new cloud solutions and has “absolutely nothing on blockchain right now.” Karpeles did not rule out looking into blockchain one day.

This is an interesting news, given that the former Mt. Gox CEO was arrested in Japan in 2015 after his bitcoin exchange suffered a hack and subsequently collapsed in 2014. He spent eleven months in detention and, even though the prosecutors had asked for a 10-year prison sentence, Karpeles has received a suspended sentence of two years and six months, under the condition that he maintains a good record over the next four years in order to avoid jail time. He is now appealing a conviction by a Japanese court for manipulating electronic data which he was found guilty of by the Tokyo District Court.

As a reminder, the exchange Mt. Gox filed for liquidation in April 2014, claiming it was hacked. They announced that approximately 850,000 Bitcoins belonging to customers and the company were missing and likely stolen, which is an amount valued at more than USD 450 million at the time. However, a few weeks later, around 200,000 were somehow found.

In August 2018, Nobuaki Kobayashi, the trustee of Mt. Gox, announced in a note that the online rehabilitation claim filing system was available, but strictly for individuals who were the victims of the hack, while the corporate creditors would have to wait. In January this year, Kobayashi announced the new schedule and deadlines for creditors to file proof of their claims, after which the rehabilitation plan to the court was submitted.