Mt. Gox CEO Fights Class In $400M Bitcoin Fraud Case
Clark Mindock, 10 March 2021
The former CEO of defunct Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox doubled down on his opposition to class certification for customers of the service, saying a plan recently announced in Japan would better compensate them than U.S. litigation would.
Mark Karpeles asked an Illinois federal court Tuesday to weigh the impact of a plan created through a Japanese rehabilitation proceeding to return assets to Mt. Gox customers. The former CEO said that though the plan’s details are private, public estimates related to the Japanese plan indicate that former customers could potentially be compensated well through the deal and with much lower costs than proceeding with American litigation.
The argument was made as to supplement to an earlier opposition to class certification and after the court heard argument in January on that issue. Karpeles previously argued that class certification would likely require a level of commonality that would be difficult to prove.
