7 ms·

Q&A With Mt. Gox’s Karpelès: What Went Wrong?

101 points by rdl 12y ago

afreak 12y ago
> We tried, but we didn’t have money and also often they turned us down. A former Financial Services Agency bureaucrat approached us once last year, but he declined our offer at the end. This is disturbing. For an organisation that promoted itself as a focal point for Bitcoin trading, claiming to be the largest, what does this mean for the other exchanges and services out there? Are they all running on just hopes and dreams? Overall this article is quite light and it would have been nice to see more questions asked. It seemed rather softball. Like where were the questions about his falsifying of his employment history? How did he go from running a gaming service (not Magic, but Ragnarok Online) to running a currency exchange? These questions should be asked and they should be asked in a hardball sort of fashion.
- sp332 12y ago
  Are they all running on just hopes and dreams? Well, yeah. Being the "biggest" puts you in a good spot to ride out the growth of bitcoin, but bitcoin is currently tiny. All the exchanges are tiny.
- danielweber 12y ago
  It's possible he just didn't want to pay the guy enough, but . . . yeah. A brick-and-mortar bank hires a lot of appsec folks to review their code, for lots of money, and they at least have the legal system to fall back on. That's after they pay market rates for labor to write the code in the first place. If I was in charge of MtGox security I would probably get an ulcer. One mistake and it's over, forever.
mantraxD 12y ago
Well there was a complication during his birth that caused extended oxygen deprivation, and he'll never be quite right his entire life. Then people gave him millions worth of their savings. That's what went wrong. I actually happen to think doing interviews with him, struggling to explain the unexplainable is quite pointless. It's cruel entertainment. It's like asking a baby why are those pants pooped.
- loopdoend 12y ago
  Are you creating multiple throwaways just to troll users on this site? https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mantraxC https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mantraxC https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mantraxB https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mantraxB
  - mantraxD 12y ago
    Oh come on, I have one post that's been substantially negatively modded and the little nerd detectives are coming out of their basements to shower me with their investigation insights. Yes, Sherlock, I have a few accounts, but I do it because the site is so coded that it's easier to make new accounts than to remember my passwords. So sue me. Why aren't you creating throwaway accounts. Are you here for the achievement badges? Building a legacy? To leave your children one day or something. I happen to think points are earned so they can be wasted from time to time. It keeps life in balance. The purpose of me posting is so I can say what I want to say, I don't care about the scores. Most often they're positive, from time to time they're negative. So be it. And if I wanted to create throwaway accounts, I wouldn't do so with the same name and easily identifiable suffix, so you can then nag me about it, genius. Those previous accounts all have a positive score, by the way. But since for the first time ever, I was coerced into a rant, I guess this one's a first. I've never went off topic on NewsHackers. You made me do it, so congratulations.
rdl 12y ago
For me the underlying question is still: was he initially just incredibly incompetent, or always a scam using incompetence as a cover? Even in the case of just pure incompetence, there was a failure of ethics/law in how problems were handled, but if it was just incompetence fundamentally, bringing in a good partner early on might have saved it.
- wpietri 12y ago
  At the limit, I'm not sure those two are distinguishable. There was a story a while back about a law firm that discovered its escrow account was empty, even though it should have had millions in it. Turns out a legal secretary had gotten caught up in a Nigerian scam. She started out sending a small amount of her own money. They'd tell her they just needed a little more and then she'd get it all back plus a lot more. As she got deeper in trouble, at some point she started "borrowing" from her employer. Incompetence led to pressure that created ethical failure. My guess (as uninformed as anybody's) is that Karpeles started out merely incompetent and with underdeveloped ethics. As he got in deeper, he just focused on trying to stay out of trouble in the short term. That led to massive snowballing of problems. His very modest helpings of competence and ethical backbone were quickly overrun, demoted in priority to the same level as getting enough niacin in his diet. The best liars I know aren't people who know that they're lying; they're people who focus on saying what you want to hear while ignoring entirely what the truth might be. For those unfamiliar with the Dunning-Kruger effect, it also seems relevant here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  - argc 12y ago
    Seems likely, any references that support your theory? Many people on /r/bitcoin and such places seemed to think that he outright stole it, but could be pure speculation (I didn't follow the story, don't take my word for it).
    - streptomycin 12y ago
      The theory I've heard along those lines is that he lost the Bitcoins years ago due to incompetence and was trying to make back the losses so that he wouldn't have to own up to it. You can imagine how that strategy might have spiraled out of control as the price of Bitcoins increased. It's mostly speculation. But nearly everything we know at this point is speculation, other than that Karpeles has a history of both technical and ethical shortcomings, which basically means that anything is possible.
swalsh 12y ago
"Q: Why didn’t you hire experienced professionals? A: We tried, but we didn’t have money and also often they turned us down. A former Financial Services Agency bureaucrat approached us once last year, but he declined our offer at the end." I'm pretty sure what happened here is a professional was interested in helping out, got a look at the books and ran.
- VMG 12y ago
  I think somebody ever wrote about an interview experience for an IT position at MtGox on reddit - it was very close to what you imagined.
  - konradb 12y ago
    Do you have a link to that? It sounds like an interesting read!
    - user24 12y ago
      Here's a mention of it: http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1yuvj4/coinbase_confirms_mtgox_insolvency/cfo4qtw http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1yuvj4/coinb... Another mention: http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1xeg9b/mtgox_over_priced_and_rising_now_under_priced_and/ http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1xeg9b/mtgox... Getting closer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7196109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7196109 Here we go: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_at_mtgox_offices_5_to_7th_february/cf9ct0o http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a... Here's a different interview experience too: http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/1zg66x/lets_play_spot_the_bugs_in_mtgox_leaked_source/cftvpgk http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/1zg66x/lets_play_spot_t...
    - Asparagirl 12y ago
      Here you go: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_at_mtgox_offices_5_to_7th_february/cf9ct0o http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a... Editing code in production on a financial services platform? Wow. Note that his/her interviewer actually shows up in the thread a bit farther down to confirm the story.
ipsin 12y ago
I would love to hear Karpeles explain or deny the "Willy" bot theory, because for me it's still a bit of mystery whether it was an attack or a built-in attempt to dig his company out of a hole.
moe 12y ago
Q: Why didn’t you hire experienced professionals? A: We tried, but we didn’t have money [...] Says the CEO of a company that 'lost' $500MM worth of bitcoins. I think the mere fact that he's still not in prison suggests that he retained at least enough of the 'lost' coins to bribe a few people...
- icebraining 12y ago
  I'm not sure I follow you. The money that they lost (scare quotes or not) was not theirs, it was their users'. It's not like they could use it to hire someone.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    If they couldn't raise enough operating funds from the revenue they were seeing, they needed to raise their fees.
  - curun1r 12y ago
    To lose someone else's money means you actually lost it. To 'lose' someone else's money means you lost it into your own account. The previous poster was suggesting that the money hadn't been necessarily been lost to thieves but that Karpelès, himself, had stolen at least a good portion of it and then used some of it for bribes.
  - moe 12y ago
    In 2013 MtGox collected on average $150k USD in transaction fees. Per day. On peak days, such as 1st December 2013, MtGox collected up to $1.3MM USD in fees. That is money they could have used to hire someone. Karpeles claim of 'we had no money' is not just laughable. It's an open slap in the face of everyone who lost money to MtGox.
sillysaurus3 12y ago
Let me remind everyone that Karpeles is an established liar and a convicted computer fraudster, and will obviously say or do anything at this point to clear his own name. http://newslines.org/mt-gox/joins-linux-cyberjoueurs/ http://newslines.org/mt-gox/joins-linux-cyberjoueurs/ http://newslines.org/mt-gox/convicted-of-computer-fraud/ http://newslines.org/mt-gox/convicted-of-computer-fraud/ Again, what ultimately convinced me of Karpeles' character is that he paid his IRC support staff to lie to users. The support staff didn't realize they were being paid to lie, but they were certainly lies. They were being paid to tell users, "Yes, all of your coins are safe and secure" while Karpeles was drafting his Mt. Gox crisis report: http://www.scribd.com/doc/209050732/MtGox-Situation-Crisis-Strategy-Draft http://www.scribd.com/doc/209050732/MtGox-Situation-Crisis-S... Once Mt. Gox was hacked in the aftermath, a log of their trading activity was leaked. In that log, there's evidence of an Mt. Gox trading bot that had been operating for a long time, buying up bitcoins in order to inflate the price. http://willyreport.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/the-willy-report-proof-of-massive-fraudulent-trading-activity-at-mt-gox-and-how-it-has-affected-the-price-of-bitcoin/ http://willyreport.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/the-willy-report... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796748 At this point, I don't think Mt. Gox or Karpeles deserves any further attention, except as a warning that even the largest Bitcoin exchange can fail, which is why you must store your bitcoins in your own secure wallet, not any third party service. EDIT: Also, Mt. Gox lost at most 386 bitcoins to malleability: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7482451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7482451
- guiomie 12y ago
  Could he have been inflating the price to recover the loss from the stolen bitcoins ? This way he could have kept the company a float ...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - danielweber 12y ago
    But he was short N bitcoins. He should have tried to drive the price down so he could rebuy those N bitcoins.
user24 12y ago
I think there's definitely some sort of reality distortion field in Mark's head - that or the interview's been heavily edited. Thankfully I never had any money in MtGox, but comments like "I learned a lot, but I lost a lot" and "I always worried about ‘What if all the bitcoins were gone?’" really make me think he never did and still doesn't understand that he was responsible for half a billion dollars of other people's money. I just don't comprehend his attitude. He's posting pictures of kittens on twitter. It's just... odd.
- streptomycin 12y ago
  I don't know, I think it's probably difficult for any of us to imagine how we'd react to losing half a billion dollars.
- chicagomint 12y ago
  Even his own mother seems to think so. “(Mark’s) communication at a personal level is catastrophic. It’s always been difficult to get him to speak. We tried to get him to be more extrovert” http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/21/us-bitcoin-mtgox-karpeles-mother-idUSBREA3K01J20140421 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/21/us-bitcoin-mtgox-k... She does believe her son is honest. I imagine most mothers might be slightly biased towards that judgment. I think we will be finding out more information about what actually happened at Mt. Gox for years to come. Who has the rights to the movie?
notastartup 12y ago
so did he take all the bitcoins for himself?
homersapien 12y ago
"I wish I had five of me..." So that the train wreck would have been 5x as bad?
BillyParadise 12y ago
What went wrong? "They trusted me with their bitcoins."
fmavituna 12y ago
Q: What were your mistakes? A: Security. I still can't wrap my head around how someone decides to do a startup around bitcoin and doesn't make security their first priority from the beginning.
pachydermic 12y ago
Did anyone look at the site for that other company he was talking about? On its about page, it says: """ Tibanne Co. Ltd. is a Tokyo, Japan-based corporation founded in 2009 by Mark Karpeles, a young technopreneur with more than 15 years experience in software development, network administration and business development. Mark is well-versed in multiple programming languages, has a strong background in network security, and is well-known in the tech community. Tibanne specializes in web hosting, application development and system management. We are currently engaged in the research and development of new and existing services to produce innovative solutions for our clients. Our team is comprised of talented Japanese and international staff hailing from many countries, disciplines and specializations. """ What the fuck? What is wrong with this guy... I gotta admire his shameless self-promotion. I'd be hiding under a rock if I were him, not banking on my ruined reputation for my other company. I wonder what else there is to this story
- trevorcreech 12y ago
  Tibanne is his old company, and is actually the entity which owns MtGox. I suspect that about page is from a couple years ago.
- danielweber 12y ago
  a young technopreneur with more than 15 years experience I can't decide if I'm more annoyed by a) being both "young" plus having "15 years experience", or b) "technopreneur."
  - nilved 12y ago
    What's wrong with a? In another two and a half years I'll have 15 years of programming experience and still be well below the average age on this site.
briantakita 12y ago
> Right now, it is so easy to use it for illegal activities, such as money laundering Hmmm. Freudian slip?

101 points by rdl 12y ago

> We tried, but we didn’t have money and also often they turned us down. A former Financial Services Agency bureaucrat approached us once last year, but he declined our offer at the end. This is disturbing. For an organisation that promoted itself as a focal point for Bitcoin trading, claiming to be the largest, what does this mean for the other exchanges and services out there? Are they all running on just hopes and dreams? Overall this article is quite light and it would have been nice to see more questions asked. It seemed rather softball. Like where were the questions about his falsifying of his employment history? How did he go from running a gaming service (not Magic, but Ragnarok Online) to running a currency exchange? These questions should be asked and they should be asked in a hardball sort of fashion.

sp332 12y ago
Are they all running on just hopes and dreams? Well, yeah. Being the "biggest" puts you in a good spot to ride out the growth of bitcoin, but bitcoin is currently tiny. All the exchanges are tiny.
danielweber 12y ago
It's possible he just didn't want to pay the guy enough, but . . . yeah. A brick-and-mortar bank hires a lot of appsec folks to review their code, for lots of money, and they at least have the legal system to fall back on. That's after they pay market rates for labor to write the code in the first place. If I was in charge of MtGox security I would probably get an ulcer. One mistake and it's over, forever.

mantraxD 12y ago

Well there was a complication during his birth that caused extended oxygen deprivation, and he'll never be quite right his entire life. Then people gave him millions worth of their savings. That's what went wrong. I actually happen to think doing interviews with him, struggling to explain the unexplainable is quite pointless. It's cruel entertainment. It's like asking a baby why are those pants pooped.

loopdoend 12y ago
Are you creating multiple throwaways just to troll users on this site? https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mantraxC https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mantraxC https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mantraxB https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mantraxB
- mantraxD 12y ago
  Oh come on, I have one post that's been substantially negatively modded and the little nerd detectives are coming out of their basements to shower me with their investigation insights. Yes, Sherlock, I have a few accounts, but I do it because the site is so coded that it's easier to make new accounts than to remember my passwords. So sue me. Why aren't you creating throwaway accounts. Are you here for the achievement badges? Building a legacy? To leave your children one day or something. I happen to think points are earned so they can be wasted from time to time. It keeps life in balance. The purpose of me posting is so I can say what I want to say, I don't care about the scores. Most often they're positive, from time to time they're negative. So be it. And if I wanted to create throwaway accounts, I wouldn't do so with the same name and easily identifiable suffix, so you can then nag me about it, genius. Those previous accounts all have a positive score, by the way. But since for the first time ever, I was coerced into a rant, I guess this one's a first. I've never went off topic on NewsHackers. You made me do it, so congratulations.

rdl 12y ago

For me the underlying question is still: was he initially just incredibly incompetent, or always a scam using incompetence as a cover? Even in the case of just pure incompetence, there was a failure of ethics/law in how problems were handled, but if it was just incompetence fundamentally, bringing in a good partner early on might have saved it.

wpietri 12y ago
At the limit, I'm not sure those two are distinguishable. There was a story a while back about a law firm that discovered its escrow account was empty, even though it should have had millions in it. Turns out a legal secretary had gotten caught up in a Nigerian scam. She started out sending a small amount of her own money. They'd tell her they just needed a little more and then she'd get it all back plus a lot more. As she got deeper in trouble, at some point she started "borrowing" from her employer. Incompetence led to pressure that created ethical failure. My guess (as uninformed as anybody's) is that Karpeles started out merely incompetent and with underdeveloped ethics. As he got in deeper, he just focused on trying to stay out of trouble in the short term. That led to massive snowballing of problems. His very modest helpings of competence and ethical backbone were quickly overrun, demoted in priority to the same level as getting enough niacin in his diet. The best liars I know aren't people who know that they're lying; they're people who focus on saying what you want to hear while ignoring entirely what the truth might be. For those unfamiliar with the Dunning-Kruger effect, it also seems relevant here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- argc 12y ago
  Seems likely, any references that support your theory? Many people on /r/bitcoin and such places seemed to think that he outright stole it, but could be pure speculation (I didn't follow the story, don't take my word for it).
  - streptomycin 12y ago
    The theory I've heard along those lines is that he lost the Bitcoins years ago due to incompetence and was trying to make back the losses so that he wouldn't have to own up to it. You can imagine how that strategy might have spiraled out of control as the price of Bitcoins increased. It's mostly speculation. But nearly everything we know at this point is speculation, other than that Karpeles has a history of both technical and ethical shortcomings, which basically means that anything is possible.

swalsh 12y ago

"Q: Why didn’t you hire experienced professionals? A: We tried, but we didn’t have money and also often they turned us down. A former Financial Services Agency bureaucrat approached us once last year, but he declined our offer at the end." I'm pretty sure what happened here is a professional was interested in helping out, got a look at the books and ran.

VMG 12y ago
I think somebody ever wrote about an interview experience for an IT position at MtGox on reddit - it was very close to what you imagined.
- konradb 12y ago
  Do you have a link to that? It sounds like an interesting read!
  - user24 12y ago
    Here's a mention of it: http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1yuvj4/coinbase_confirms_mtgox_insolvency/cfo4qtw http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1yuvj4/coinb... Another mention: http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1xeg9b/mtgox_over_priced_and_rising_now_under_priced_and/ http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1xeg9b/mtgox... Getting closer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7196109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7196109 Here we go: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_at_mtgox_offices_5_to_7th_february/cf9ct0o http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a... Here's a different interview experience too: http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/1zg66x/lets_play_spot_the_bugs_in_mtgox_leaked_source/cftvpgk http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/1zg66x/lets_play_spot_t...
  - Asparagirl 12y ago
    Here you go: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_at_mtgox_offices_5_to_7th_february/cf9ct0o http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a... Editing code in production on a financial services platform? Wow. Note that his/her interviewer actually shows up in the thread a bit farther down to confirm the story.

ipsin 12y ago

I would love to hear Karpeles explain or deny the "Willy" bot theory, because for me it's still a bit of mystery whether it was an attack or a built-in attempt to dig his company out of a hole.

moe 12y ago

Q: Why didn’t you hire experienced professionals? A: We tried, but we didn’t have money [...] Says the CEO of a company that 'lost' $500MM worth of bitcoins. I think the mere fact that he's still not in prison suggests that he retained at least enough of the 'lost' coins to bribe a few people...

icebraining 12y ago
I'm not sure I follow you. The money that they lost (scare quotes or not) was not theirs, it was their users'. It's not like they could use it to hire someone.
- dublinben 12y ago
  If they couldn't raise enough operating funds from the revenue they were seeing, they needed to raise their fees.
- curun1r 12y ago
  To lose someone else's money means you actually lost it. To 'lose' someone else's money means you lost it into your own account. The previous poster was suggesting that the money hadn't been necessarily been lost to thieves but that Karpelès, himself, had stolen at least a good portion of it and then used some of it for bribes.
- moe 12y ago
  In 2013 MtGox collected on average $150k USD in transaction fees. Per day. On peak days, such as 1st December 2013, MtGox collected up to $1.3MM USD in fees. That is money they could have used to hire someone. Karpeles claim of 'we had no money' is not just laughable. It's an open slap in the face of everyone who lost money to MtGox.

sillysaurus3 12y ago

Let me remind everyone that Karpeles is an established liar and a convicted computer fraudster, and will obviously say or do anything at this point to clear his own name. http://newslines.org/mt-gox/joins-linux-cyberjoueurs/ http://newslines.org/mt-gox/joins-linux-cyberjoueurs/ http://newslines.org/mt-gox/convicted-of-computer-fraud/ http://newslines.org/mt-gox/convicted-of-computer-fraud/ Again, what ultimately convinced me of Karpeles' character is that he paid his IRC support staff to lie to users. The support staff didn't realize they were being paid to lie, but they were certainly lies. They were being paid to tell users, "Yes, all of your coins are safe and secure" while Karpeles was drafting his Mt. Gox crisis report: http://www.scribd.com/doc/209050732/MtGox-Situation-Crisis-Strategy-Draft http://www.scribd.com/doc/209050732/MtGox-Situation-Crisis-S... Once Mt. Gox was hacked in the aftermath, a log of their trading activity was leaked. In that log, there's evidence of an Mt. Gox trading bot that had been operating for a long time, buying up bitcoins in order to inflate the price. http://willyreport.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/the-willy-report-proof-of-massive-fraudulent-trading-activity-at-mt-gox-and-how-it-has-affected-the-price-of-bitcoin/ http://willyreport.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/the-willy-report... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796748 At this point, I don't think Mt. Gox or Karpeles deserves any further attention, except as a warning that even the largest Bitcoin exchange can fail, which is why you must store your bitcoins in your own secure wallet, not any third party service. EDIT: Also, Mt. Gox lost at most 386 bitcoins to malleability: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7482451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7482451

guiomie 12y ago
Could he have been inflating the price to recover the loss from the stolen bitcoins ? This way he could have kept the company a float ...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- danielweber 12y ago
  But he was short N bitcoins. He should have tried to drive the price down so he could rebuy those N bitcoins.

user24 12y ago

I think there's definitely some sort of reality distortion field in Mark's head - that or the interview's been heavily edited. Thankfully I never had any money in MtGox, but comments like "I learned a lot, but I lost a lot" and "I always worried about ‘What if all the bitcoins were gone?’" really make me think he never did and still doesn't understand that he was responsible for half a billion dollars of other people's money. I just don't comprehend his attitude. He's posting pictures of kittens on twitter. It's just... odd.

streptomycin 12y ago
I don't know, I think it's probably difficult for any of us to imagine how we'd react to losing half a billion dollars.
chicagomint 12y ago
Even his own mother seems to think so. “(Mark’s) communication at a personal level is catastrophic. It’s always been difficult to get him to speak. We tried to get him to be more extrovert” http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/21/us-bitcoin-mtgox-karpeles-mother-idUSBREA3K01J20140421 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/21/us-bitcoin-mtgox-k... She does believe her son is honest. I imagine most mothers might be slightly biased towards that judgment. I think we will be finding out more information about what actually happened at Mt. Gox for years to come. Who has the rights to the movie?

notastartup 12y ago

so did he take all the bitcoins for himself?

homersapien 12y ago

"I wish I had five of me..." So that the train wreck would have been 5x as bad?

BillyParadise 12y ago

What went wrong? "They trusted me with their bitcoins."

fmavituna 12y ago

Q: What were your mistakes? A: Security. I still can't wrap my head around how someone decides to do a startup around bitcoin and doesn't make security their first priority from the beginning.

pachydermic 12y ago

Did anyone look at the site for that other company he was talking about? On its about page, it says: """ Tibanne Co. Ltd. is a Tokyo, Japan-based corporation founded in 2009 by Mark Karpeles, a young technopreneur with more than 15 years experience in software development, network administration and business development. Mark is well-versed in multiple programming languages, has a strong background in network security, and is well-known in the tech community. Tibanne specializes in web hosting, application development and system management. We are currently engaged in the research and development of new and existing services to produce innovative solutions for our clients. Our team is comprised of talented Japanese and international staff hailing from many countries, disciplines and specializations. """ What the fuck? What is wrong with this guy... I gotta admire his shameless self-promotion. I'd be hiding under a rock if I were him, not banking on my ruined reputation for my other company. I wonder what else there is to this story

trevorcreech 12y ago
Tibanne is his old company, and is actually the entity which owns MtGox. I suspect that about page is from a couple years ago.
danielweber 12y ago
a young technopreneur with more than 15 years experience I can't decide if I'm more annoyed by a) being both "young" plus having "15 years experience", or b) "technopreneur."
- nilved 12y ago
  What's wrong with a? In another two and a half years I'll have 15 years of programming experience and still be well below the average age on this site.

briantakita 12y ago

> Right now, it is so easy to use it for illegal activities, such as money laundering Hmmm. Freudian slip?