Bitcoin [BTC]: Mt Gox redemption plan demonstrates the power of open source network, says Brock Pierce

Mt Gox, which was one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, was declared bankrupt in 2014 when the exchange lost or suffered a theft of about 850,000 bitcoins [worth about $450 million] and caused a loss of about 7% of the total Bitcoin in circulation.

However, Brock Pierce, Venture capitalist, and former Bitcoin Foundation director, believes that his plan to take over the Mt Gox rehabilitation process demonstrates “the overall power of Bitcoin and open source” network.

Brock Pierce has been an ardent participant of the cryptocurrency industry and has recently said that he wants the creditors of Mt Gox to receive everything that they have lost in the scandal. Pierce recently announced a project called Gox Rising, stating that his company Sunlot has acquired Mt Gox from Mark Karpeles, who is yet to admit to the sale publicly.

He spoke on the latest edition of the Keiser Report on February 16, where he seems to have garnered mixed reactions to his ‘Gox Rising’ initiative. He said:

“When people bring up these names of Mt Gox and Mark Kerpeles, they have a strong disloyal reaction and for a good reason. The incidents that took place in last 2013 or early 2014 set our cryptocurrency industry back for a year or two. It was the primary reason for the bear market in 2014 and 2015, and it might also be responsible for the bear run Bitcoin is under today.”

He further added:

“A total of 103,000 account holders were affected, 24000 people applied for bank bankruptcy when the exchange collapsed. So they were 24,000 victims. These were the early betters of Bitcoins, who had the conviction to take the risk and invest into the cryptocurrency and suffered a loss to absolutely no fault of theirs.”

The main intention behind Gox Rising was to be an alternative to Mt Gox bankruptcy trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi’s civil rehabilitation effort. The organization, dubbed as a medium to assure the people who suffered from the Mt Gox scandal that they would be repaid as much money as possible, had published a proposed plan on its website regarding the regrouping.

Pierce said that community actions were crucial in making sure that the failed exchange didn’t become a cryptocurrency ‘Lehman Brothers’.

Pierce said:

“Do we want it to end like Lehman Brothers, like the old financial system? Or would we like this story to end differently? Would we like this story to end in a way that demonstrates the power of the open source community and blockchain and Bitcoin?”