Former Mt. Gox CEO Proposes Bitcoin Hard Fork to Recover 80,000 BTC Stolen in 2011

Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès has proposed a Bitcoin hard fork to recover approximately 80,000 BTC stolen in 2011, now worth over $5.2 billion. The plan would apply a new consensus rule to address 1Feex…sb6uF, allowing the funds—dormant for fifteen years under the attacker's control—to be moved using a signature from an official Mt. Gox recovery address instead of the hacker's private key. Under the proposal, the rule would activate at a defined future block height, with recovered BTC flowing into the court-supervised rehabilitation process for creditor repayment, separate from the roughly 200,000 BTC already being distributed by trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi under a schedule extended to October 31, 2026. Supporters argue the theft is undisputed and limited to one address within an established legal framework, while critics warn that altering Bitcoin's ownership rules risks undermining immutability and could trigger a chain split if parts of the network reject the upgrade.