Two years before Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy, a half dozen employees at the Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange challenged CEO Mark Karpeles over whether client money was being used to cover costs, according to three people who participated in the discussion.
The question of how Mt. Gox handled other people's money — the issue raised by staff in the showdown with Karpeles in early 2012 — remains crucial to unraveling a multimillion-dollar mystery under examination by authorities here.
A bankruptcy administrator and police are seeking to determine how a Tokyo startup that shot from obscurity to dominate global trade in bitcoin managed to lose more than $27 million in legitimate cash held in a bank as well as bitcoins worth close to $450 million at today's prices.