Mark Karpeles, who just may be the most hated man in Bitcoin, has done a new interview with a low-profile Japan-based blogger with no history of writing about Bitcoin.
Perhaps, knowing the Bitcoin community will be asking much tougher questions, this is the only way he feels he can do an interview without being attacked. Rgardless, he’s answered a few questions about his history, why he lives in Japan, and how he views his life.
When asked about how he was first introduced to Bitcoin, he revealed “it all started in 2010, when a French friend of mine in Peru, who was one of our clients, asked me, ‘could I pay in bitcoin?’ I said, ‘sure’, and started to look into it, how it works etc.” I’m sure some members of the community, given a time machine, would go back and disrupt that interaction.
He also explained that what interests him about Bitcoin is not the libertarian, anarchist, or futurist aspects, but rather the technology itself. “the fact of maintaining a global data base in a secured way, the way it works, the fact that each client has a secured private wallet, thep ossibility to exchange values with other clients without any security problems, to h ave an entirely decentralized system, capable of exchanging data between two people.”
Reflecting on his life, Karpeles considers himself “really lucky” until now, but “at the same time, I think I am unlucky when I look at how it all ended, it’s actually quite horrible.” Waxing philosophical, he told the audience to “never hesitate. When you wake up in the morning, you have two types of people, those who will go back to bed because it’s the morning and those who will put their dream in action.”
He had some unkind words to say about CoinLab as well. “CoinLab is a joke. Five million dollars was stolen from Mt. Gox, and we’re being sued by CoinLab…I can see no other words but ‘cheeky’ to qualify CoinLab.”
When asked about his thoughts on the Mt. Gox experience, he compares it to one of the most traumatic events a person can go through. “Maybe it’s too strong to use that word, but…to have someone who enters your server and you don’t know about it, it’s close to rape. You have your space, where you do your things, and while you are not watching,s omeone enters inside it, does what he wants. It might not be the appropriate word, but that’s how I feel.”
As for what actually happened with Mt. Gox, Karpeles explained one of his theories as to what happened, though he cautioned that it’s nto a fact, “just my opinion”:
for example someone who physically enters your offices, install keys on the computers. Like someone who gets hired as a cleaning agent, and takes advantage of a moment when the offices are empty and do the things I just mentioned. You see that in movies, but it exists also in reality. I think it’s not very complicated to get hired as a cleaning agent in a building where you have a bitcoin business. So, when you get that job and you clean the offices, you have access to the building at hours when it’s generally empty, because you usually clean places when no one is working. It’s a way like any other way to access an office that manages billions of dollars in bitcoin, when the office is empty. That is something that should not be possible. But it is, for many companies it is. You can ask your employer to vacuum his own space to counter that issue. But sometimes you can have an employee who gets hired and whose real intention is just to get access to what you have.
His thoughts on the BitLicence are unusual, but maybe not surprising considering the momentous security breack Karpeles experienced with Mt. Gox. “I think it’s constraining, on one hand…however in other cases, I think the text needs to be much tougher. Particularly regarding safety requirements.”
While those hoping for more details on the collapse of Mt. Gox may remain disappointed, this interview does help to get closer to Karpeles as a human being, rather than the vilified figure he is today.
While this writer can’t help but feel sympathy for him, I also didn’t lose anything in the Mt. Gox crash.
Read the full interview here.
Mark Karpeles Interviewed By A Non-Bitcoiner
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