In 2011, an Mt Gox wallet was robbed of almost 80,000 BTC. At that time, 1 BTC was somewhere around 10 USD. The Mt Gox hack incident happened almost 9 years ago but the wallet in question still possesses more 79, 570 BTC as of today. After the hack, all of the funds were transferred to this anonymous Mt Gox wallet and the funds still remain there intact.
This was posted on Reddit by a user who claims that Mark Karpeles, the former Mt Gox operator is on Reddit himself where he has indicated that Jed McCaleb, ex Ripple CTO might be the person behind the hack and the owner of the wallet. The weird thing about this Mt Gox wallet is that over the years, this wallet has received 1.2 BTC more, spread over 317 different transactions.
The hack and Mt Gox wallet
Mt Gox was a Bitcoin exchange platform that started in 2010. By 2013, Mt Gox was assumed to be handling almost two-thirds of BTC transactions worldwide. However, after the 2011 hack, Mt Gox had another similar issue in 2014 when they mishandled approximately 850,000 BTC which belonged to the common people. The value at that time was $450 million and as of today, the value is more than $8.2 trillion.
After the incident, the trades were suspended by Mt Gox and then they finally declared bankruptcy. It is supposed that 200,000 of the missing BTC were found.
Intact 80000 BTC in the wallet since 2011
In mid-2019, it was reported that the Mt Gox ex-employees were taking Jed McCaleb to the court for the theft and mishandling of 80000 BTC. Karpeles was also found guilty of embezzlement and was given suspended jail time for 33 months.
The intact 80000 BTC in the wallet since 2011 has left the user shocked and confused at the same time. Shocked because of the appreciation in the value of the amount but confused because there have no withdrawals at all from the wallet. What is the hacker waiting for?
Featured image from Pixabay
