A cold morning in February 2014, Kolin Burges stood in front of the Tokyo office of MT. Gox, tightening a handwritten cardboard panel and demanding responses from the CEO of Bitcoin Exchange, Mark Karpeles, about his missing tokens.
Eleven years later, the emblematic sign, emblematic of the first major financial scandal in Crypto, is sold at auction on Scare.city with a reserve price of 4.5 BTC ($ 383,000). The sale begins later Friday and ends on April 3.
“At the time, it did not even go through my mind that it could become precious,” said Burges in an interview with Coindesk in Hong Kong. “I thought I would perhaps write a book one day, but the sign itself did not seem important. It is remarkable to see how things have evolved.”
Burges had stolen from London to Tokyo after Mount Gox, then the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, mysteriously gave up withdrawals.
“I woke up one morning and I knew I had to go to Tokyo,” recalls Burges. “I didn’t really have a detailed plan. I just knew I had to be there.
“When the withdrawal did not happen, I started to feel this feeling of growing terror. At first, I was not 100%sure, but over time, it became more and more clear that something was wrong.”
His impromptu demonstration quickly drawn the attention of international media, even attracting the advice of a consumer financial press like the Wall Street Journal.
Burges recalled these first days to Tokyo as oniriques and almost another world.
“The moment I confronted Karpeles was intense,” he recalls. “I demanded answers, but he just brushed me, blaming the technical problems. He seemed surreal, standing in the snow, knowing that something major was happening.”
While Burges demonstrated outside the offices of MT. GOX, the attempts at the exchange to mitigate public repercussions are increasingly obvious.
“MT. Gox continued to suspend hope, but everyone could see the situation becoming uncontrollable,” said Burges. “They even invited us to protest in private. Everything to withdraw from the sight of the public. It was ridiculous and desperate.”
Burges remembers how drinks, someone from Mt. Gox, whom he refused to appoint, put it in private to cut it.
“At one point, the representatives of MT. GOX met me secretly, warning that continuous protests would cause the exchange of exchange and that everyone would lose their bitcoins,” he said. “This conversation clearly indicated that they knew more than they had admitted, and the situation was much worse than publicly recognized.”
Then Burges remembers, a representative tried to pay their drinks with a MT. Gox credit card – and it was refused.
“It was a worrying sign that their banking relationships are unleashed,” said Burges.
Mount Gox has filed for bankruptcy in February 2014, a few days after Burges began his protest.
Seven years later, Karpeles was found innocent of embezzlement in Tokyo court, while receiving a suspended sentence for data manipulation.
Last September, Karpeles created a new Crypto exchange, EllipX. He also created a cryptographic rating company called UNGOX in 2022.
In an interview with Coindesk on the sidelines of the Morea Blockchain Week in August 2024, Karples said that if he had analytical tools of modern blockchain in 2014, and third -party guards, Mount Gox “would not have taken place”.
