Idea: New consensus to reclaim stolen BTC from MtGox

Just put out a pull request on Bitcoin Core to talk about a one-time consensus that could help recover around 79,956 BTC taken during the MtGox hack back in 2011.

Are you serious right now?

I'm just trying to get a convo going. We've seen Ethereum do something similar with the DAO hack, which led to a fork. In the end, they made the call to help the folks who got hurt.

This isn't Ethereum, man. No way this flies.

Okay, but what's the real argument other than ‘it's different from Ethereum’?

Some people say that dormant addresses tied to Satoshi could be included in this recovery plan. But if we do that, then every time there's a hack, someone will want a new consensus rule to recover funds. That’ll ruin the whole idea of Bitcoin. Definitely won't pass, especially not for the relatively few MtGox victims.

What’s your best argument against it? Those coins have sat there for 15 years, everyone knows they’re from the hack, and some people are trying sneaky ways to claim them in court. Giving them back to MtGox customers seems like the right call and wouldn't cost much.

Nah. Fork it yourself if you want this.

This situation is pretty unique for a bunch of reasons.

Then just go for it. You’d be making another altcoin. Why would you need Core’s blessing? All existing nodes will just say no to your hard fork anyway.

- Use BIP 9 miner signaling, see how many mining pools run with it. If enough jump on, it could mean airdrops for everyone, not just MtGox victims.

The moment this happens, I'm out.

You don't realize how many people are involved.

No kidding! Let's assume you're actually legit! We’ve got someone who wrecked the Bitcoin Foundation and caused chaos coming up with a plan that could sink Bitcoin!

What’s gonna happen with those recovered BTC? You just want to pocket a ton of it?

You’ve already laid out the main reasons against this in your post. It’s essentially theft. More exchanges have been hacked since MtGox and lost customer funds too. Why not recover all that? What about retail investors?

I beg to differ. Yes, I have been criticized for hiding missing bitcoins. But in Japan, most charges lead to a guilty verdict. The Bitcoin Foundation fell apart on its own.

Can you show any other theft proceeds that are linked directly to a recoverable address?

And then what happens with all the other hacks after this? MtGox wasn’t the first exchange to get hacked. Just last year Bybit lost over a billion bucks and nothing was done to recover that!

How can you be sure that address belongs to the hacker? There's a good chance, but not definitive proof. They could use mixers to hide their trail.