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Mt. Gox

Mt. Gox63 posts

Mt. Gox was one of the first Bitcoin exchanges, a place where customers could convert their local currencies into the virtual currency. The site was located in Japan and run by Mark Karpeles, a young French programmer. As Bitcoin increased in value the site experienced technical difficulties, hacking and public relations crises, culminating in the exchanges’ bankruptcy in February 2014, and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of users’ funds.

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1 Jun, 1985

Mark Karpeles born in France

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Mark Marie Robert Karpelès is born in Chenove, in the Burgundy region of France. His mother is Anne Karpelès, a geologist turned realtor.

He writes his first computer program aged 10, the same year he is sent to Collège Prieuré de Binson, a Catholic boarding school two hours north of Dijon.

Oct 2005

Moves to Israel

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Karlpeles  moves to Israel, hoping to get closer to his Catholic faith while working for internet company Fotovista.  In a blog post he argues that Hebrew is as important to Christians as it is to religious Jews.  He only worked at this job for a few months before he once again began to feel depressed and “empty” according to one blog. In addition to his work at Fotovista he works on his own site, Ookoo.org. However, due to power outages and service disruptions he loses most of his customers and returns to France.

Jun 2009

Karpeles moves to Japan

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Karpeles arrives in his Japan with his cat Tiban and some hard drives. Karpeles first visited Japan for a month in 2007, and posted a blog entry in Japanese saying he was a ‘geek’.

Karpeles Blog: I do computer-related work (a programmer); my goal is world domination.