© Reuters Former Mt.Gox owner believes cryptocurrency security gaps persist
Tokyo, Apr 11 (.).- French businessman Mark Karpèles, former owner of the cryptocurrency exchange Mt.Gox, stated on Monday that this sector “continues to have security problems” such as those that caused the fall in 2014 of the which was the world’s largest market for .
This was stated at a press conference at the foreign correspondents club in Tokyo, where he spoke about his new company UNGOX.
Karpèles was considered responsible for the fall of Mt.Gox and prosecuted in Japan for fraud, after the scandal over the disappearance of assets from the exchange house due to an alleged cyberattack, although in 2019 he was acquitted for the bankruptcy of his company.
The French businessman was, however, sentenced to thirty months in prison, a suspended sentence for data manipulation and after having spent approximately one year in prison awaiting trial.
Karpèles blamed his company’s security problems on “the speed with which the sector has expanded” in recent years.
This Monday he stated that these gaps “continue to exist today in many exchange houses that move billions of dollars.”
“There are still many cases of hacked exchange houses. Regulations in the sector have advanced, but security has not improved that much,” warned the French businessman, who after being prosecuted in Japan continues to reside in this country and has decided to create a new risk consulting company for the “crypto” sector.
“I think it is impossible to create a perfectly secure cryptocurrency exchange,” Karpèles acknowledged, noting that, as is the case in the IT sector in general, “technology, security and ways to circumvent it are continually evolving. “.
In his new company, dubbed UNGOX, Karpèles aspires to use his experience “on everything that can go wrong” when running a cryptocurrency market and to avoid similar cases, he said.
Mt.Gox filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after halting all transactions and freezing its clients’ assets for days due to the alleged hack, triggering a panic in the virtual currency markets.
That decision sank the price of the best-known virtual currency and also caused the disappearance of 850,000 bitcoin units, equivalent then to about 368 million euros or 420 million dollars, belonging to some 127,000 customers around the world and many of which remain unaccounted for.
Those affected will receive multimillion-dollar compensation in bitcoins under the plan approved at the end of last year in the creditors’ contest decreed by the Japanese justice.
Despite the security problems and scandals that have shaken the sector, Karpèles predicts a “very exciting” future “full of possibilities” for the growing ecosystem of cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance (DEFI) and NFTs (unique digital assets). that can be bought or sold online but cannot be held in tangible form).
