Mark Karpelès, who used to be CEO of the now-defunct Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange, has announced plans for a new cryptocurrency platform called EllipX that will fix problems from the past.
Karpelès said at Korea Blockchain Week 2024 that EllipX would have its headquarters in Poland and follow the new Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) of the European Union.
Karpelès made it clear that the start of EllipX would bring more than just compliance. He said that people who used to trade on Mt. Gox would get a 50% refund on their fees.
This was done to show appreciation for the losses those people had. Beyond Europe, EllipX also wants to grow its business around the world.
Mt. Gox Collapse Aftermath
Karpelès says that the new exchange will have cutting-edge tools that were not available when Mt. Gox was open from 2011 to 2014, when hackers shut it down.
Karpelès said that EllipX will put an enormous amount of effort into being open and honest, in order to rebuild trust that was lost when Mt. Gox went down.
Karpelès talked about the support he got from the Bitcoin community, which made him want to go back to the Web3 space even though he was getting death threats during the fallout.
Karpelès’s news comes at a time when Mt. Gox is finally paying back its debts after ten years of legal and financial problems. The now-defunct exchange owes about $9 billion in digital assets.
It used to hold an enormous amount of the world’s Bitcoin stock. About $6 billion has been paid back so far, and another $3 billion is set aside for future payments.
When it was first started, Mt. Gox had only a few dozen users. It quickly grew to over a million before a series of deadly hacks shut it down.
The exchange went bankrupt after more than 950,000 BTC were stolen. Now, ten years later, Karpelès is back with EllipX, trying to restore trust and credibility in the cryptocurrency market.
