Mt. Gox歷史改變的那一刻來得悄無聲息。當時Mt. Gox還是全世界最大比特幣交易所，首席執(zhí)行官馬克·卡皮爾斯在豪華復式公寓里獨自一人，身邊只有寵物虎斑貓，公寓窗外是東京全景。2014年3月7日晚上，Mt. Gox宣布價值4.73億美元的85萬個比特幣失竊，占當時全世界比特幣總數(shù)的7%，那一晚卡皮爾斯幾乎無眠。Mt. Gox辦公室前擠滿了抗議者和攝像人員，比特幣價格一瀉千里，這位向來鎮(zhèn)定的法國人把自己軟禁在房間里，每日烤些喜歡的奶油糕點充饑，一邊讀著互聯(lián)網(wǎng)各角落涌來的咒罵郵件，大部分都罵他偷了自己的錢。直到今日，Mt. Gox被黑還是比特幣簡短歷史上最慘烈的災難。

直到律師回家，卡皮爾斯才有時間回到電腦前，在屏幕上查看可怕的數(shù)字。公司崩潰后，他花了好幾天系統(tǒng)地檢查Mt. Gox的舊數(shù)字錢包，也就是用于訪問比特幣的字母數(shù)字秘鑰存儲的地方。他一個個找，找了十多個全是空的。但這次，區(qū)塊鏈掃描軟件運行六個小時候，悄然顯示一個意想不到的數(shù)字：他發(fā)現(xiàn)存在云端的20萬個比特幣，顯然已經(jīng)遺忘三年，從來沒動過。

The moment that would change the history of Mt. Gox came without so much as a beep. Mark Karpelès, the CEO of what until recently had been the world’s biggest Bitcoin exchange, was finally alone, save for his tabby cat, in his palatial penthouse with a panoramic view of Tokyo. It was the evening of March 7, 2014, and Karpelès had barely slept in the week since Mt. Gox had sought bankruptcy protection, announcing that 850,000 of its Bitcoins, worth some $473 million at the time—and representing 7% of all Bitcoins then in existence—had somehow disappeared. With protesters and camera crews swarming in front of Mt. Gox’s office and the price of Bitcoin in free fall, the usually unflappable Frenchman had been confined to a self-imposed house arrest, subsisting on the buttery pastries he liked to bake and reading the hate mail that flooded in from all corners of the Internet—most of it accusing him of stealing the money himself. Today the Mt. Gox hack remains the worst disaster in Bitcoin’s short history.

It wasn’t until his lawyers had gone home for the day that Karpelès could retreat to his computer, and that’s when he noticed the shocking number on his screen. Following his company’s collapse, he’d spent days methodically double-checking Mt. Gox’s old digital wallets, where the secret alphanumeric keys for accessing Bitcoins are stored. One after another—a dozen so far—the wallets had come up empty. But this time, when the blockchain-scanning program finished running after six hours, it had silently served up an unexpected result: He’d found 200,000 Bitcoins, stashed away in an archived file in the cloud—apparently forgotten and untouched for three years.

接受《財富》幾次采訪時，卡皮爾斯第一次完整分享了Mt. Gox最后時刻發(fā)生的事，包括如何突然找到20萬個比特幣。

遺忘的比特幣失而復得成了Mt. Gox用戶彌補損失的唯一機會。還有65萬個比特幣失竊，怎么丟的大家都清楚，是一些黑客干的。但卡皮爾斯還是在加密貨幣圈聲名掃地。雖然新出現(xiàn)的證據(jù)顯示他不用擔罪，法律如何判決尚無定數(shù)。

諷刺的是，現(xiàn)在卡皮爾斯認為找回20萬個比特幣并不算幸運。因為這些比特幣引發(fā)了爭議，他在想如果當初沒找到會不會更好。“當時我覺得找到這些幣對大家是好事，”32歲的卡皮爾斯說，雖然在日本生活了近九年，但說話仍帶著濃重的法國口音?！艾F(xiàn)在卻成了爭議的主要原因?！?/p>

對很多人來說，比特幣失而復得這個遲來的好消息有些讓人不敢相信，也讓向來冷靜，從程序員變?yōu)榇蠛嗟目ㄆ査癸@得更加心虛。會不會他只是從小金庫里吐出了一些，好讓人們少找他麻煩？很快人們發(fā)現(xiàn)更多懷疑他的理由：泄露的交易記錄中有一個明顯是Mt. Gox內(nèi)部賬戶，現(xiàn)在一般被稱為“Willy bot”，該賬戶會故意虛增賬戶余額，然后用來買比特幣。如果Mt. Gox缺比特幣，Willy就會幫忙補上。有時也用另一種方式交易，即賣出借來的比特幣套現(xiàn)。批評者推測，一旦失敗，此舉便是采用欺詐方式維持Mt. Gox經(jīng)營。

Willy bot可疑交易行為曝光后，2015年8月卡皮爾斯被捕，罪名為操縱電子數(shù)據(jù)。去年夏天他在法庭上承認他聲稱的“義務交換”，但不承認有違法行為。在監(jiān)獄待了近一年后，目前卡皮爾斯在東京受審，罪名包括貪污和違反信任原則等，但都與比特幣失竊無關。

意料之外的轉(zhuǎn)折卻讓卡皮爾斯擔心。Mt. Gox倒閉到2014年4月清算期間，比特幣價格下跌了超過20%到483美元。兩年半后比特幣價格才回到之前高點，時間很長，所以很多Mt. Gox的受害者覺得丟的錢不太多，所以沒有提起索賠。但去年初比特幣終于突破之前高點。5月底比特幣價格已接近2200美元，Mt. Gox剩下的202185個比特幣價值已遠超任何索賠金額。12月比特幣價格達到2萬美元時，Mt. Gox的資產(chǎn)（當時還包括比特幣現(xiàn)金等衍生品）激增至44億美元，達到當初Mt. Gox宣布損失的十倍?！靶计飘a(chǎn)后，剩下的資產(chǎn)突然升值50倍，真是前所未有，”律師兼Mt. Gox債權人丹尼爾·凱爾曼說，他在東京忙這個案子已經(jīng)一年。

In a series of conversations with Fortune, Karpelès shared for the first time the full details of what he says really happened in the final days of Mt. Gox—including his account of how he stumbled on the 200,000 Bitcoins.

The surprise discovery would turn out to be, to this day, the only hope Mt. Gox customers have of getting their money back. It’s been proved that the other 650,000 missing Bitcoins were stolen—we now know, by various hackers. But Karpelès continues to be one of the most infamous figures in cryptocurrency. And his legal fate is uncertain, even as new evidence has emerged that largely exonerates him.

Ironically, today Karpelès doesn’t view the retrieval of the 200,000 Bitcoins as a lucky break. They’ve become such a subject of contention, in fact, that he wonders whether it might have been better if they’d remained lost. “At the time, I felt finding these was a good thing for everyone,” recalls Karpelès, now 32, his French accent still strong after nearly nine years in Japan. “But now this is also the main reason why we are stuck fighting.”

To many, the belated revelation seemed too good to be true—making the unemotional programmer-turned-mogul look even guiltier. Was he just coughing up his go-bag in an attempt to wiggle out of trouble? Soon, they had even more reason to suspect him: Leaked trading records suggested that what could only be an internal Mt. Gox account—widely known today as the “Willy bot”—was artificially inflating its account balance and using the money to buy Bitcoins. When Mt. Gox ran low on Bitcoins, Willy helped make up the shortfall. Sometimes its trades went the other way, selling borrowed Bitcoins to generate cash. Critics speculate that it was a fraudulent, if failed, exercise to keep Mt. Gox afloat.

That suspicious activity by the Willy bot led to Karpelès’s arrest in August 2015 on charges of manipulating electronic data; he admitted in court last summer to running what he called the “obligation exchange” but disputes doing anything illegal. After spending almost a year in jail, Karpelès is currently on trial in Tokyo, facing criminal allegations such as embezzlement and breach of trust, all unrelated to the missing Bitcoins.

But it was an unforeseen twist that today is causing Karpelès the greatest angst. Between the time Mt. Gox shut down and when it entered liquidation in April 2014, the price of Bitcoin had plummeted more than 20% to $483. It would be over two and a half years before Bitcoin would regain its previous high—long enough that many Mt. Gox victims didn’t even bother filing a claim for what they considered an insignificant sum. Then early last year, Bitcoin finally broke its old record. By late May, it was trading at nearly $2,200, making Mt. Gox’s remaining Bitcoins—202,185 to be exact—worth more than everything it owed in claims. When the Bitcoin price peaked at $20,000 in December, the value of Mt. Gox’s assets (by then including Bitcoin derivatives such as Bitcoin Cash) ballooned to $4.4 billion—nearly 10 times the amount Mt. Gox said it lost in the first place. “The fact that you have a bankruptcy where the only asset that it owns goes up by 5,000%, that’s pretty unprecedented,” says Daniel Kelman, a lawyer and Mt. Gox creditor who spent a year in Tokyo working on the case.

單獨拘禁期間，卡皮爾斯研究了好幾個月日本破產(chǎn)法，他知道法律中有個漏洞：根據(jù)破產(chǎn)法，大部分資產(chǎn)都要返還給Mt. Gox股東，而他持有88%份額。在當前價格下，這筆橫財會讓他變身億萬富翁。但同時也意味著沒完沒了的訴訟和人身威脅，這是宣布個人破產(chǎn)的卡皮爾斯極力避免的。他表示如果收到錢很愿意交出去，但由此產(chǎn)生估計高達60%的稅將是災難性的。

“我從沒想過留下這筆錢，”我們3月在東京見面時，卡皮爾斯說?！澳菢又粫闊??！?/p>

我們在一家日本咖啡館二樓，會議室逼仄悶熱，卡皮爾斯說跟之前他的牢房比大不了多少。拘禁期間他不能使用電腦，只能用筆記本量牢房打發(fā)時間。（釋放后，卡皮爾斯還發(fā)給朋友一張拘禁期間減掉70磅體重的圖表。）這一日，東京終于感覺像春天，櫻花四處綻放，但他一直窩在咖啡館里，因為這里距離各種律師的辦公室和破產(chǎn)管理人的辦公室差不多，他經(jīng)常出于對之前客戶的“責任感”跟破產(chǎn)管理人會面。他說最近太忙，這天早上都沒時間刮胡子。

Mt. Gox名字來自卡牌游戲Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange首字母縮寫，正是該游戲2011年啟發(fā)創(chuàng)始人杰德·麥卡勒布搭建出網(wǎng)站原型。員工印象里，卡皮爾斯從不會因任何事慌亂。他總是坐在震動按摩椅上開會，喜歡用辦公室買的3D打印機打印梳子。他回答問題時有句口頭禪：“應該沒問題?！?/p>

但他最近多了一種跟執(zhí)掌Mt. Gox期間顯然不同的黑色幽默。他笑著說，即便現(xiàn)在想買比特幣，估計也沒有交易所肯賣給他，還有距離上次收到死亡威脅已經(jīng)幾個月了，“創(chuàng)下了新紀錄”。不過回憶起2014年2月那些無眠之夜，發(fā)現(xiàn)Mt. Gox所有比特幣不翼而飛時，他表情很嚴肅。“我覺得這是一輩子最慘的經(jīng)歷，”他說。但他并不確定當初能不能做得更好?！叭绻敃r我有現(xiàn)在的知識，當然可能處理得更完善，”他口氣老練，顯然已說過多次?！案鶕?jù)當時我掌握的信息，還有當時的情況，我還是認為已經(jīng)盡了最大努力?！?/p>

至于當時卡皮爾斯究竟掌握哪些信息，還有何時知曉都更像個謎，還有到底是誰偷了那些比特幣。比特幣的公共記錄，也就是區(qū)塊鏈允許所有人查詢交易記錄，從而查看Mt. Gox的比特幣去了哪些錢包。但多位專家證實，區(qū)塊鏈分析揭露了一項令人不安的事實：2013年中 Mt. Gox的比特幣就已失竊，但八個月后才公之于眾。

分析顯示，宣布破產(chǎn)的時機恰逢Willy bot高速運轉(zhuǎn)四處騰挪，有可能從中看出卡皮爾斯真實目的。“我感覺這是一種回應真相的方式，是的，所有的錢都沒了，” Chainalysis首席執(zhí)行官邁克爾·格羅納杰表示。當時Mt. Gox破產(chǎn)管理人聘請Chainalysis調(diào)查比特幣失竊真相。但這也是為何他相信卡皮爾斯從未計劃帶著20萬個比特幣潛逃。“我認為，如果他在破產(chǎn)之前找到這些幣，就不會宣布破產(chǎn)，”格羅納杰稱。他表示，卡皮爾斯原本可以用這些幣彌補自己的損失。

2014年Mt. Gox凍結比特幣提取后，一位名叫科林·伯吉斯的用戶從倫敦飛到東京。由此到Mt. Gox宣布破產(chǎn)的兩個多星期里，他天天在交易所總部外舉牌抗議，牌子上寫著，“MTGOX，我們的錢去哪了？”很快有其他抗議者跟他一起，可見當時世界各地的Mt. Gox用戶沮喪之情。

金·尼爾森也很煩惱，但他不太喜歡直接抗議。尼爾森是個性格溫和的瑞典軟件工程師，留著山羊胡，聲音低沉，他也在Mt. Gox持有比特幣，之前其實沒接觸過區(qū)塊鏈技術。但他最出名的是研究復雜的軟件漏洞。業(yè)余時間里，他曾一下午打通超級瑪麗2所有關卡。這也是他對待Mt. Gox問題的方式：“就像全世界最大的拼圖，要是誰能解決，肯定讓世人驚嘆?！?/p>

After months studying Japan’s bankruptcy code while in solitary confinement, Karpelès knew there was a wrinkle: Under the law, most of that excess would return to shareholders of Mt. Gox, of which he held 88%. At current prices, the windfall would make him a billionaire. It would also mean an interminable nightmare of lawsuits and threats that Karpelès—who is also in personal bankruptcy—is desperate to avoid. He says he’d happily give the money back if it came to him, but the estimated 60% tax triggered in the process would be catastrophic.

“I never expected to get anything out of this,” Karpelès tells me when we meet in Tokyo in March. “It would bring more trouble than anything.”

We’re on the second floor of a Japanese café, in a stuffy meeting room that Karpelès says is not much bigger than his jail cell. Deprived of a computer behind bars, he passed time by measuring the room using the length of his notebook. (After his release, Karpelès sent friends a chart of the 70 pounds he’d lost while detained.) It’s the first day in Tokyo that finally feels like spring, cherry blossoms in bloom, but he has holed up here in the café because it’s roughly equidistant from the offices of his various lawyers, as well as the bankruptcy trustee, whom he meets with regularly out of a sense of “duty” to his former customers. He’s been so busy, he says, he didn’t have time to shave that morning.

Karpelès took control of Mt. Gox—the name is an acronym for Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange, after the trading card game that inspired the original site—in 2011 from founder Jed McCaleb. Employees don’t remember Karpelès ever seeming fazed about anything: He took meetings from a vibrating massage chair and churned out combs using a 3D printer he’d bought for the office. His hallmark reply to questions: “Should be fine.”

But he’s lately developed a sense of gallows humor uncharacteristic of his Mt. Gox days. Even if he wanted to buy Bitcoin today, he doubts he could find an exchange that would take his money, he laughs, and notes that it’s been a few months since he’s received any death threats—“a new record.” He turns serious, though, when he recounts the sleepless nights in February 2014 when he says he first discovered that all of Mt. Gox’s Bitcoins were missing. “I think this really is the worst experience for anyone to have in life,” he says. Still, he’s not sure he could have done the job better. “If I knew at the time what I know today, I would have done things differently, of course,” he says with a practiced tone. “But based on the information I had at the time, and the situation at the time, I still think that I’ve done the best I could do with what I had.”

The question of what Karpelès knew, and when, though, remains more of a mystery than even who stole the coins. Bitcoin’s public ledger, or blockchain, allows anyone to trace the path of transactions, showing the wallets where Mt. Gox’s Bitcoins went. But the same blockchain analysis, multiple experts have confirmed, has also revealed an unsettling fact: By mid-2013, Mt. Gox had already lost all its Bitcoins—eight months before it admitted so publicly.

The timing of this insolvency, analysis shows, coincided with the Willy bot kicking into high gear—perhaps providing a hint as to Karpelès’s true motivations. “I feel that this is a reaction to this revelation that okay, all the money is gone,” says Michael Gronager, CEO of Chainalysis, which was hired by the Mt. Gox bankruptcy trustee to investigate the Bitcoins’ disappearance. Yet it’s also why he doesn’t believe Karpelès was planning to run away with the 200,000 Bitcoins. “I think that had he found them before he went bankrupt, he would never have gone bankrupt,” says Gronager. Rather, he says, Karpelès would have used the hoard to cover his losses.

When Mt. Gox froze Bitcoin withdrawals in 2014, a customer named Kolin Burges hopped a flight from London to Tokyo. For more than two weeks, until Mt. Gox declared bankruptcy, he kept vigil outside the exchange’s headquarters, holding a sign reading, “MTGOX WHERE IS OUR MONEY?” Other protesters soon joined him, demonstrating the frustration of Mt. Gox customers worldwide.

Kim Nilsson was just as vexed, but standing in the snow wasn’t his style. A modest Swedish software engineer with a goatee and a quiet voice, Nilsson, who also owned Bitcoins at Mt. Gox, had never before worked on blockchain technology. But he had a reputation for getting to the bottom of the toughest software bugs; in his off-time, he’d been known to beat all the levels of Super Mario Bros. 2 in an afternoon sitting. And that’s how he approached Mt. Gox: “It was basically just the world’s biggest puzzle at the time—like whoever solves this, imagine the recognition.”

他跟Mt. Gox其他一些用戶組建了區(qū)塊鏈安全公司W(wǎng)izSec，專門查失竊案。雖然公司很快解散，尼爾森還是繼續(xù)秘密追查，他自學區(qū)塊鏈分析技術，不厭其煩地追蹤Mt. Gox被偷的錢。雖然一開始尼爾森也查了失竊案中卡皮爾斯有沒有參與，但很快發(fā)現(xiàn)卡皮爾斯跟他一樣想查出真相。在卡皮爾斯最需要朋友的時候，WizSec團隊來到他的公寓，還帶了做蘋果餡餅的配料。很快卡皮爾斯向尼爾森提供了Mt. Gox內(nèi)部數(shù)據(jù)協(xié)助調(diào)查。“真希望是我偷的，這樣我就能還回去，”當時卡皮爾斯告訴他們。

接下來四年里，尼爾森估計有一年半花在調(diào)查入侵Mt. Gox的黑客。這些努力完全無償，他在Mt. Gox只有12.7個比特幣，是最小的債權人之一。J·莫里斯曾協(xié)助創(chuàng)立WizSec，但很快就離開了也沒參與調(diào)查，在他看來，尼爾森的舉動充分體現(xiàn)出比特幣的優(yōu)點——去中心化的系統(tǒng)，沒有政府管控，全靠個人用戶支持?！敖鸱浅Ｖt虛，從來不吹牛，他都沒想著發(fā)財，只是為了充滿熱情的項目付出多年努力，”莫里斯說?！斑@就是比特幣的本質(zhì)。”

2016年初，尼爾森找到一個嫌疑人。他查詢被盜資金時發(fā)現(xiàn)，Mt. Gox宣布失竊的65萬個比特幣中，有63萬個直接進入同一人控制的電子錢包。此人在Mt. Gox也有賬戶，用戶名叫WME。尼爾森偶然發(fā)現(xiàn)比特幣在線論壇上一個舊帖子，有個用戶名里帶WME的人在論壇里發(fā)脾氣，抱怨另一家加密貨幣交易所凍結了他的賬戶?！鞍亚灏椎腻X還給我！”帖子里寫道。抱怨時，WME透露他持有一些比特幣錢包。但最大的突破出現(xiàn)在該用戶發(fā)布的一封律師信，信上清晰寫著他的真實姓名。像通常找到大發(fā)現(xiàn)后一樣，尼爾森立刻寫信給紐約的美國國稅局探員加里·阿爾福德，請他協(xié)助抓捕網(wǎng)絡罪犯。

7月炎熱的一天，警察涌入希臘一個海灘邊，抓走了跟家人度假的俄羅斯人。美國聯(lián)邦檢察官指控38歲的IT專家亞歷山大·威尼克非法轉(zhuǎn)移53萬個Mt. Gox被盜比特幣，主要通過名為WME的電子錢包和其他賬戶。檢方還指控他協(xié)助經(jīng)營BTC-e交易所，該交易所主要目的是非法洗錢。調(diào)查方稱，成立BTC-e可能就是為了洗從Mt. Gox偷的錢。區(qū)塊鏈分析顯示擊垮Mt. Gox的偷竊行為從2011年秋天就已開始，跟BTC-e成立時間差不多。Mt. Gox在線存儲庫——即所謂“熱錢包”的秘鑰遭竊并復制，泄露了交易所的存儲地址。同為債權人，Chainalysis的格羅納杰表示，接下來兩年里，比特幣進入交易所后十分之九皆被盜：“就是說井底有個洞，有人不斷通過洞偷錢?！?/p>

卡皮爾斯稱，由于黑客每次只偷很小數(shù)目，而賬目整體在增加，所以沒留意?！氨忍貛艣]有減少，”他表示?！爸皇窃黾拥臎]那么多。”

尼爾森認為，他能證明威尼克與另外10萬個聯(lián)邦政府沒有提到的失竊比特幣有關，不過他并不清楚自己有沒有幫上政府調(diào)查，還是只幫著證明了政府的結論。威尼克反對從希臘引渡，美國起訴書中沒有透露另外五名被告名字，美國國稅局拒絕就“正在進行的”調(diào)查發(fā)表評論。但簽署該起訴書的前聯(lián)邦檢察官凱瑟琳·霍恩表示，威尼克曾使用比特幣，明顯有犯罪行為：“一開始看起來無法解決，通過使用比特幣就能追溯?！?/p>

對卡皮爾斯來說，威尼克被捕證實了長期以來的猜測：2011年Mt. Gox遭受一系列拒絕服務等網(wǎng)絡攻擊時，俄羅斯比特幣交易所管理者是背后主謀。卡皮爾斯說，“他這么做，Mt. Gox是受害方，所有債權人都是受害者，我自己也是受害者。”

威尼克拒絕指控，目前尚未因從Mt. Gox盜竊受到指控。但從規(guī)模和持續(xù)時間來看，他跟幫著洗錢的盜賊們關系不一般：“我敢說起碼他知道該把錢往哪里匯，”尼爾森表示。

該案還帶出比較諷刺的笑話：威尼克稱失竊的比特幣都是立刻出售，比Mt. Gox宣布被黑早很多，所以受害者實際損失的金額比起黑客賺到的金額高得多，據(jù)Chainalysis估算，黑客收入約為2000萬美元。

一旦比特幣轉(zhuǎn)為現(xiàn)金，區(qū)塊鏈線索就斷了。這意味著即便當局從嫌疑人手中沒收比特幣，也沒法證明這些幣來自Mt. Gox。住在亞利桑那州的債權人肖恩·海斯表示，索賠338個比特幣會“改變生活”，他補充說，“如果能拿回來一些很高興，但總會想剩下的那些在哪？”

對伯吉斯來說，最關鍵在于他的抗議終于有了回應?！拔覀兘K于知道比特幣去哪了，只是拿不回來，”他說，“在我看來，問題解決了?！?/p>

近四年里，喬什·瓊斯都認為之前在Mt. Gox的近44000個比特幣能找回來。2017年中，比特幣價格飛漲，Mt. Gox的資產(chǎn)比之前4.3億美元索賠金額多出好幾倍。去年秋天，Mt. Gox托管人，也代理安全氣囊制造商高田公司的頂尖重組律師小林信明透露，根據(jù)日本破產(chǎn)法，債權人索賠金額不得超過2014年時的價值：即每個比特幣483美元?！昂喼悲偭?，”瓊斯表示，他的比特幣主要是為Bitcoin Builder的客戶代持，成立該公司后，在Mt. Gox最后幾星期里主要做套利交易。“事情不能這么辦。”

瓊斯在圣莫妮卡家中什么也做不了，但另一位主要債權人正努力確保比特幣完全分配給Mt. Gox受害人。美國人理查德·福爾瑟姆曾在貝恩咨詢?nèi)毡痉止竟ぷ?，后來在日本成立了首批私募股權公司，他聘請日本最大的律所制定了一項計劃：要是Mt. Gox不再處于技術性破產(chǎn)狀態(tài)呢？11月他們提交請求“民事恢復” Mt. Gox，目前在東京地區(qū)法院審理。一位外部審查員2月表示支持該建議。西村朝日合伙人慎福岡（音譯）主要負責此案，他相信很快會獲批，可能4月底就有消息。“我們相信法院對破產(chǎn)案件中的問題有充分理解，”福岡表示。

當然，他提到的問題也包括大部分Mt. Gox資產(chǎn)應屬于馬克·卡皮爾斯。“如果最終結果是這樣就搞笑了，”Kraken首席執(zhí)行官杰西·鮑威爾說，Kraken是位于舊金山的比特幣交易所，也曾被制定協(xié)助調(diào)查和分配Mt. Gox索賠案（他自己也是大債權人。）

如果福岡的計劃成功，日本將第一次出現(xiàn)因破產(chǎn)“撤銷”的公司重新恢復。他表示：“這是非常特殊的情況。”傳統(tǒng)的民事恢復案中，只要法院批準，通常要花6個月完成，也意味著樂觀情況下，最快今年下半年債權人就可獲賠，最理想是通過比特幣方式。福岡表示還會考慮在恢復計劃中提出進一步調(diào)查失竊比特幣，希望能多找回一些。（他補充說，CoinLab一項7500萬美元的訴訟曾拖延破產(chǎn)進程，可以通過撥出法定準備金避開。）這對托馬斯·布拉齊耶爾之類債權人來說將是非常棒的結果，布拉齊耶爾在紐約對沖基金B(yǎng).E. Capital Management擔任董事總經(jīng)理，他曾以八折價格買下當時價值100萬美元的索賠權，估計不管結果怎樣都能賺到錢?！爱斎?，如果能順利恢復就發(fā)大財了，能賺8倍，9倍甚至10倍，”布拉齊耶爾說。

對蒙羞多年的Mt. Gox首席執(zhí)行官來說，這也是解脫，他說這輩子再不碰加密貨幣：“現(xiàn)在我跟加密貨幣唯一的關系就是解決破產(chǎn)案，再沒別的?！笨ㄆ査拐f。此外，他也對電子貨幣最初的承諾失去信心：“我相信，現(xiàn)在比特幣已經(jīng)完蛋了。”

兩年前的夏天卡皮爾斯從獄中獲釋后，每過幾個月就要換個公寓，主要擔心人身安全。遭拘禁的三個月里，他每天從早到晚接受審訊，拒絕承認日本警方指控的罪行，他還一度被指為神秘的比特幣創(chuàng)始人中本聰。雖然他感覺指控力度不強，仍然有可能被定罪，至少第一次審判中有可能。日本的定罪率高達99%，也是少數(shù)允許檢察官申請兩次開釋的國家。一兩年后，他還是有可能回去坐牢?！俺霆z后，我感覺一切都像做夢，感覺不到周圍的事物是否真實，”他一邊吃奶油草莓蛋糕一邊說?！爸钡浆F(xiàn)在我都不確定?！?/p>

He teamed up with some other Mt. Gox customers to launch WizSec, a blockchain security firm dedicated to cracking the case. But while the company quickly dissolved, Nilsson stayed on the case in secret, teaching himself blockchain analysis and painstakingly tracing the money stolen from Mt. Gox. Although Nilsson started off investigating Karpelès’s role in the theft, he soon realized the CEO was just as eager as he was to know what happened. At a time when Karpelès needed friends most, the WizSec team scored an invite to his apartment by offering to bring the Frenchman the ingredients he needed to bake his famous apple quiche. Soon, Karpelès was feeding Nilsson internal Mt. Gox data that could help solve the case. “I wish I had stolen the money, because then I could just give it back,” Karpelès told them at the time.

Over the next four years, Nilsson estimates he spent a year-and-a-half’s worth of full-time hours pursuing the Mt. Gox hackers. He’s never been paid for his work; his 12.7 Bitcoin claim at Mt. Gox makes him one of its smallest creditors. To J. Maurice, who helped found WizSec but left the company early on and was not involved in the investigation, Nilsson’s effort epitomizes the virtues of Bitcoin—a decentralized system free of government control, which relies instead on individual users to sustain it. “Kim is humble, he doesn’t brag, he doesn’t even want to get rich. He’s just working hard on something for years as his passion project,” Maurice says. “That’s what Bitcoin is.”

By early 2016, Nilsson had a suspect. As he tracked the stolen funds, he saw that, of the 650,000 Bitcoins reported stolen from Mt. Gox, 630,000 had gone straight into wallets controlled by the same person. That person also had an account at Mt. Gox, associated with the username WME. Then Nilsson stumbled across an old post in an online Bitcoin forum in which someone with the handle WME had thrown a tantrum, complaining that another cryptocurrency exchange had frozen his funds. “Give [me] my CLEAN MONEY!” read the post. In the process, WME dropped clues that he owned some of the Bitcoin wallets in question. But the big break came when the same user posted a letter from his lawyer, his first and last name visible for the whole world to see. Nilsson, as he routinely did with his findings, dashed off an email to Gary Alford, a special agent with the IRS in New York who has helped catch cybercriminals.

Then one scorching day last July, police stormed a beach in Greece to arrest a Russian citizen vacationing with his family. U.S. federal prosecutors charged Alexander Vinnik, a 38-year-old IT specialist, with laundering 530,000 of the stolen Mt. Gox Bitcoins through his WME wallets and other accounts. They also accused him of helping to run the exchange BTC-e, whose primary purpose was allegedly to launder money. It is plausible, investigators say, that BTC-e was founded specifically to launder funds stolen from Mt. Gox. Blockchain analysis shows that the hack that devastated Mt. Gox began in autumn 2011, around the time BTC-e started up. Keys to Mt. Gox’s “hot wallet”—its online Bitcoin repository—were stolen and copied, compromising the exchange’s deposit addresses. So for the next two years, in nine out of 10 instances, coins were being stolen as soon as they came in, says Chainalysis’ Gronager, who is also a creditor: “It meant that you had a hole in the bottom of the well, and someone was just draining money.”

Karpelès claims he never noticed because the hackers stole small amounts at a time, and the balances generally seemed to move upward. “Bitcoin didn’t exactly decrease,” he says. “It’s just that they didn’t increase as much as they should.”

Nilsson, who believes he has convincingly linked Vinnik to at least 100,000 more Mt. Gox Bitcoins than the feds allege, still doesn’t know whether he helped the government’s investigation or simply confirmed its conclusions. With Vinnik fighting extradition from Greece and five outstanding defendants whose names remain redacted in the U.S. indictment, the IRS won’t comment on the “active and ongoing” investigation. But Kathryn Haun, a former federal prosecutor who signed off on the indictment, says Vinnik’s use of Bitcoin helps clearly connect him to the crime: “At first blush what seemed unsolvable turned out to be traceable through the use of digital currency.”

For Karpelès, Vinnik’s arrest reinforced a long-held theory: that Russian Bitcoin exchange administrators were behind a series of ?denial-of-service and other cyberattacks that hit Mt. Gox in 2011. Says Karpelès, “What he did, Mt. Gox is a victim of this, which means that all creditors are victims of this, and I am too a victim of this.”

Vinnik, who has denied the charges, has not been charged with stealing from Mt. Gox. But the magnitude and duration of his involvement points to some familiarity with the thieves whose profits he was allegedly laundering: “I assume at least he knows where to send the check,” says Nilsson.

Still, there’s an ironic punch line to the case: Because the stolen Bitcoins were sold right away, allegedly by Vinnik and long before Mt. Gox disclosed the hack, victims lost much more, in dollar value, than the hackers ever made—which, according to Chainalysis, was only about $20 million.

And as soon as the Bitcoins were converted to cash, the blockchain trail was broken. That means that even if authorities seize Bitcoins from the suspects, there won’t be anything to prove they’re from Mt. Gox. Sean Hays, a creditor in Arizona who says his 338 Bitcoin claim would be “l(fā)ife-changing,” adds, “I’ll be glad to have part of it back, but I think there will always be the hunt for where’s the rest?”

But for Burges, the key question that inspired his protest has finally been answered. “We know where the coins went, and we won’t get them back,” he says. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s solved.”

For almost four years, Josh Jones assumed he’d eventually receive his rightful portion of his nearly 44,000 Bitcoins locked inside Mt. Gox. By mid-2017, Bitcoin’s price was soaring, and Mt. Gox had enough to pay out the $430 million it owed in claims several times over. Then last September, Mt. Gox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi, a top restructuring lawyer also representing Takata in the airbag-maker’s bankruptcy, broke the news: Under Japanese bankruptcy law, the value of creditors’ claims were capped at what they were worth back in 2014: $483 per Bitcoin. “That’s just crazy,” says Jones, who held most of the coins on behalf of his clients at Bitcoin Builder, the service he built to facilitate arbitrage trading at Mt. Gox in its final weeks. “That can’t be how it’s going to work out.”

But while there was little Jones could do back home in Santa Monica, another major creditor took it upon himself to ensure the Bitcoins would be fully divvied up among Mt. Gox victims. Richard Folsom, an American who worked for Bain & Co. in Tokyo before founding one of the first private equity shops in Japan, hired the biggest Japanese law firm and came up with a plan: What if Mt. Gox wasn’t technically bankrupt anymore? Their petition for “civil rehabilitation” of Mt. Gox, filed in November, is now pending before the Tokyo District Court; an outside examiner recommended in its favor in February. Shin Fukuoka, the partner at Nishimura & Asahi leading the effort, is confident it will be approved, as early as the end of April. “We think that the court has sufficient understanding about the problems in the case of proceeding with bankruptcy,” Fukuoka says.

Those problems, of course, include the fact that the majority of Mt. Gox’s assets would otherwise accrue to Mark Karpelès. “Such an outcome would be a travesty,” says Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken, the San Francisco–based Bitcoin exchange appointed to help investigate and distribute Mt. Gox claims (and himself a substantial creditor).

If Fukuoka’s plan works, it would be the first time in Japan that a business “abolished” in bankruptcy was rehabilitated, he says: “These are very unique circumstances.” In a traditional civil rehabilitation, once the court gives the green light, it typically takes six months for the plan to be finalized—meaning optimistically, creditors could begin to get paid, preferably in Bitcoins, as soon as late this year. Fukuoka says he’s also considering mandating further investigation into the stolen Bitcoins as part of the rehab plan, in hopes more will be recovered. (A $75 million lawsuit from CoinLab that has held up the bankruptcy process could be sidestepped by setting aside a legal reserve fund in the meantime, he adds.) It would be an extraordinary outcome for creditors like Thomas Braziel, managing partner of New York–based hedge fund B.E. Capital Management, who has bought up $1 million worth of claims at 80￠ on the dollar, believing he will turn a profit no matter what. “Of course, if the rehabilitation happens, it’s a bonanza, and you make eight, nine, 10 times your money,” Braziel says.

That would be a relief to Mt. Gox’s disgraced CEO, who says he’s had enough of the cryptocurrency business to last a lifetime: “The only thing I’m touching related to cryptocurrency is how to solve this bankruptcy. Nothing more,” says Karpelès. Besides, he has lost faith in the initial promise of digital money: “Bitcoin right now is, I believe, doomed.”

Since his release from jail two summers ago, Karpelès has been moving apartments every few months out of concerns for his own safety. During three months of all-day interrogations while detained, he refused to confess to the accusations Japanese authorities threw at him—including, at one point, that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s mysterious founder. Still, despite what he feels is a weak case against him, he thinks the odds are he’ll be found guilty, at least during this first trial; Japan, which has a more than 99% conviction rate, is also one of a few countries that allows prosecutors to appeal an acquittal twice. In a year or two, he could be sent back behind bars. “After I came out, I felt like in a kind of dream, like I didn’t feel things were real,” he says, over a slice of cake with cream and cherries. “Even today I’m not sure yet.”

卡皮爾斯并未因就Mt. Gox破產(chǎn)情況說謊受審，關于這點即便最同情他的人也不愿原諒?！癕t. Gox的比特幣沒了之后，他還在從其他用戶手里獲得新幣付給其他人，有點像龐氏騙局里的伯尼·麥道夫，”律師凱爾曼說。

到目前為止，卡皮爾斯還沒去過美國（審判期間也不得離開日本），只好充分發(fā)揮日語流利和熟悉日本正式商業(yè)習慣的優(yōu)勢。他表示，威尼克被捕后洗脫了自己的嫌疑，找工作也容易了許多。即便如此，Mt. Gox的污點還是擺脫不去。“沒人愿意請他，”日本加密貨幣交易所Quoine首席執(zhí)行官麥克·栢森表示。

今年早些時候，馬克·卡皮爾斯終于找到一份新工作：總部位于美國丹佛的VPN服務公司London Trust Media首席技術官。最近該公司業(yè)務拓展到加密貨幣相關企業(yè)?！皯?zhàn)斗的關鍵時刻，我很愿意再給馬克一次機會，” London Trust Media聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人兼總裁安德魯·李表示，他曾簡短負責過Mt. Gox在美國的業(yè)務。

即便Mt. Gox成功恢復，可能也不會持續(xù)很久。不過這也攔不住卡皮爾斯幻想各種辦法找回失竊的65萬個比特幣。就算原始的幣沒法找回，也許Mt. Gox可以持續(xù)經(jīng)營一段時間，用收入還清債權人的錢?？ㄆ査惯€表示發(fā)現(xiàn)有交易所可能愿意向受害人捐出一部分利潤。

但Kraken的鮑威爾等人都表示，窟窿太大實在難以填補。此外，Mt. Gox重新開張又能交易什么呢？曾抗議Mt. Gox的伯吉斯補充說，“重開就像再造一艘名叫泰坦尼克的船?！睂λ麃碚f，交易所徹底關閉意味著其他找不回來的比特幣跟著大船沉入海底。（財富中文網(wǎng)）

譯者：Pessy

審校：夏林

Karpelès, though, is not on trial for what even his sympathizers fault him for the most: lying about Mt. Gox’s insolvency. “When Mt. Gox didn’t have any of the coins, he was getting new deposits from other customers to pay off other people—kind of like a Bernie Madoff,” says Kelman, the lawyer.

For now, Karpelès, who’s never been to the United States (and isn’t allowed to leave Japan while on trial), is leveraging his mastery of Japanese and the country’s formal business customs. The arrest of Vinnik has made it easier to find work, he says, by lifting some blame from Karpelès. Even so, the taint of Mt. Gox follows him. “He is unhirable,” says Mike Kayamori, the CEO of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Quoine.

Yet earlier this year, Mark Karpelès landed a big new job: chief technology officer at London Trust Media, a Denver-based corporation that runs the largest virtual private network (VPN) service in the world. It has recently been expanding into cryptocurrency-related ventures. “I am more than willing to give a second chance to Mark in this fight’s critical hour,” says Andrew Lee, cofounder and chairman of London Trust Media, who also briefly ran Mt. Gox’s U.S. operations.

Even if Mt. Gox’s rehabilitation succeeds, the company is unlikely to take another voyage. Still, that hasn’t stopped Karpelès from dreaming up schemes to get back the missing 650,000 Bitcoins. Even if the original coins can’t be retrieved, perhaps Mt. Gox could be revived long enough to generate revenue to finally make creditors whole; Karpelès also says he’s found one exchange that seems interested in pledging some of its own profits to victims.

But others, such as Kraken’s Powell, say the hole is simply too deep to fill. Besides, even if Mt. Gox did reopen, who would want to trade there? Adds Burges, the Mt. Gox protester, “It’s like having another ship called the Titanic.” For him, closure means letting the rest of the Bitcoins go down with the ship.?