Just a few days ago, it was reported that American investors were hoping to acquire and revive disgraced bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox for one bitcoin (saying they would later relaunch and repay investors).
This morning, we’re getting some more information on the topic via the Wall Street Journal. According to John Betts from Sunlot Holdings (one of the investors involved with the proposed acquisition), creditors who owned over 70 percent of the bitcoins stored on the Tokyo-based exchange are in support of the idea to revive the operation.
That, of course, must first be approved by a bankruptcy court in Japan. And with recent news that Mt. Gox would be trashing plans to rehabilitate and moving to liquidation (due to troubles consulting with more than 127,000 of its creditors around the globe), it’s unclear as to whether or not this idea will materialize.
The Wall Street Journal report notes that three other investors involved with Sunlot holdings — Brock Pierce, Matthew Roszak, and William Quigley — have agreed to purchase a 12 percent stake in the company from Jed McCaleb, the man who created Mt. Gox. He sold the exchange (which was first designed to allow players of the “Magic: The Gathering” playing card game to trade cards with others) to Mark Karpeles in 2011.
But why all the effort to save an exchange that very few will trust moving forward?
“This is about bitcoin and preserving the value of the bitcoin ecosystem,” said Betts. “This is our collective opportunity to demonstrate the commitment of [the bitcoin] community, that we don’t need government bailouts and that the community is self-healing.”
“We are prepared to invest heavily in this business once we have conducted a full accounting of MtGox’s assets and legal liabilities,” the investors wrote on a newly-set-up website that outlines their plan at SaveGox.com.
[textmarker color=”C24000″]Source[/textmarker] Wall Street Journal
lawrence97431 
Hal Taylor 
tolega 
DrApricot 
The question is posed “But why all the effort to save an exchange that very few will trust moving forward?”
The emerging entity would have a huge goodwill factor in its favor from the get-go in the hearts and minds of the creditors, having given them hope in place of certain wipe-out.
After that, their systems and service should be fairly easy to evaluate.
By the way, 70% approval is a huge endorsement, since creditors, i.e., account holders, never received a direct email solicitation for their support. They had to read of the plan online or in print, then proactively show their willingness to participate.
If creditors had been polled, the support would likely have been unanimous.
The Bitcoin community is small, technologically elite, and definitely unimpressed with muck-raking superficial Bitcoin coverage by naive reporters. It is they, in fact, who will be the first ones to recognize that with all the bad actors and irresponsible practices gone from MtGox it will have to become the safest and securest exchange in the world.
Creditors that owned 70% of the Bitcoins agreed to this? That is news to me. I am part of the 1% of Bitcoin owners on Mt Gox. I was never asked for my opinion, ever.
This % given is most probably a lie and made up to gather support.
This acquisition proposal presupposes that the 650,000 BTC are truly still lost, and not simply inaccessible as Mark Karpeles claimed. Quoting him, “Well, technically speaking it’s not “lost” just yet, just temporarily unavailable”. There could be lots of explanations for why these coins are frozen–including actions by some government agency that can’t be revealed now due to “gag” order.
Should this group succeed in taking over Mt. Gox for some paltry sum such as 1 BTC, they have in effect committed the biggest bank heist in history once they own the keys to these missing coins. Should they ever be “unfrozen”, then it’s payday!
Were these folks mere investors wanting to buy the Gox trademark, server software, and any other valuable assets, wouldn’t it would make more sense for them to purchase these assets free and clear from the bankruptcy trustee in a liquidation? That way, they would never be encumbered by any of the company’s old debts and pending lawsuits.
The assumption that this is all to help out the bitcoin community, is a little bit suspect, and raises many further questions.