The post Bitcoin immutability debate rekindled as Karpelès pushes $5.2B hard fork plan appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

The former CEO of the defunct exchange Mt. Gox, Mark Karpelès, has reignited one of Bitcoin’s fiercest ideological debates after publishing a draft proposal. Karpelès is calling for a Bitcoin hard fork that would allow almost 80,000 BTC, valued at more than $5.2 billion at current prices, to be recovered from a wallet linked to the exchange’s 2011 hack. This development comes as $4 billion was stolen in 255 crypto hacks in 2025. Within centralized exchanges, DeFi protocols and infrastructure providers, attackers got away with over $2 billion in the 10 largest incidents — roughly on par with the “nearly $2.2 billion” stolen in 2024. However, the damage was far more concentrated. While the sheer number of mid-tier exploits increased from a year earlier, 2025 also saw the largest crypto theft ever recorded, with Bybit’s $1.4 billion breach in February of that year. For the moment, Tornado Cash experienced renewed usage following the lifting of sanctions in March 2025. In the second half of the year, the mixer was used in over 70% of hacks involving mixers. Mt. Gox recovery proposal reopens Bitcoin immutability debate  In a recently published tentative proposal, Karpelès proposed a one-time change to the consensus rules that would enable Bitcoin already inside a long-dormant wallet connected to the heist to be transferred to a recovery address held by the Mt. Gox rehabilitation process.  The targeted address already received the funds after a documented compromise of Mt. Gox systems in June 2011, and the coins have gone untouched for more than 15 years.  Under Bitcoin’s existing guidelines, the funds may only be moved using the original private keys, widely believed to be lost or unavailable. Karpelès says its exceptional conditions would mandate a narrowly scoped protocol intervention — he recasts the request as a technical discussion, rather…

---

Filed under: News - @ February 28, 2026 12:20 am