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Former Mt Gox CEO’s cat memecoin has already crashed 90%

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Former Mt Gox CEO's cat memecoin has already crashed 90%

MtGox’s former CEO Mark Karpelès is shilling a cat-themed memecoin called “ChiefPussy” after a group of Pump Fun traders convinced him to promote it using his long-dead cat Tibane. 

Pump Fun account “w$kapex2” created the Solana-based token nine days ago and successfully caught Karpelès’ attention yesterday after giving him a share of the tokens and offering 100% of the trading fees. 

Karpelès was shocked that people would be trading the token based on his cat and said, “I know it’ll probably be short lived but it’s interesting for me to see how that’s happening.”

Read more: Who owns MtGox claims to billions of dollars in bitcoin?

He promoted the token on his X account, where he said he liked seeing people learn about the MtGox case and its surrounding “lore,” including stories about his cat and Russian hackers. 

As for where the fees will go, he said, “I’ll be donating part of the fees to feline CKD research in hope this helps other cats and their owners to not go through the same thing.”

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Karpelès acknowledged the token on Wednesday, and then openly supported it on Thursday, before the token shot up 2,594% to a market cap of $1.8 million.

Since this high, however, it’s fallen in typical memecoin fashion by almost 89% in one day to a market cap of $246,000. 

The price action of “$ChiefPussy” suspiciously looks like a rug pull.

He since been burning the tokens he received. 

Mark Karpelès’ cat and MtGox go way back 

Karpelès acquired the crypto exchange MtGox from its original founder Jed McCaleb in 2011. Three years later, the exchange, one of the biggest of its kind at the time, declared bankruptcy after losing hundreds of thousands of bitcoins (BTC). 

Two Russian hackers, Alexey Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner, stole at least 647,000 BTC across the exchange’s lifetime.

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In one bankruptcy filing, the exchange said it had lost 750,000 user BTC and 100,000 of its own BTC, a total of $480 million in 2014. 

Karpelès was found guilty of one charge for falsifying data and received a suspended sentence that allowed him to avoid prison time. 

It goes without saying that Tibane the cat was along for the ride. Karpelès shared how, days after taking over MtGox, the cat managed to survive a major earthquake in Japan.

The company he acquired MtGox with was called Tibanne Co. Ltd. 

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Unfortunately, Tibane passed away in 2019.

Read more: RIP Mr. Goxx, the crypto trading hamster who beat Bitcoin and Warren Buffet

Tibane also travelled from Paris to Japan on a long-haul flight that meant he had to be issued his very own passport that showed he was properly chipped and vaccinated.  

Chainstone Labs CEO Bruce Fenton claimed in 2019 that Tibane was even a member of the Bitcoin Foundation, recalling that Karpelès bought the cat a lifetime membership to match his own.

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Fenton added that membership was roughly 50 BTC, a figure worth $4.1 million today. 

Since MtGox’s collapse, years of bankruptcy proceedings have taken place, and as of last October, it claims to have repaid roughly 19,500 creditors.

Many creditors still haven’t been paid yet, however, and MtGox has extended its repayment deadlines to October 2026.

Karpelès launched another crypto exchange called EllipX back in 2024, and in 2023 was given the title “Duke of Joseon” by a so-called “cyber nation state.”

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Pumpfun Unveils Investment Arm and $3 Million Hackathon

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Pumpfun Unveils Investment Arm and $3 Million Hackathon


PUMP rallied as much as 10% but erased its gains as crypto markets dipped.

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Spot Bitcoin ETF AUM Hits Lowest Level Since April 2025

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Spot Bitcoin ETF AUM Hits Lowest Level Since April 2025

Assets in spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs slipped below $100 billion on Tuesday following a fresh $272 million in outflows.

According to data from SoSoValue, the move marked the first time spot Bitcoin ETF assets under management have fallen below that level since April 2025, after peaking at about $168 billion in October

The drop came amid a broader crypto market sell-off, with Bitcoin sliding below $74,000 on Tuesday. The global cryptocurrency market capitalization fell from $3.11 trillion to $2.64 trillion over the past week, according to CoinGecko.

Altcoin funds secure modest inflows

The latest outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs followed a brief rebound in flows on Monday, when the products attracted $562 million in net inflows.

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Still, Bitcoin funds resumed losses on Tuesday, pushing year-to-date outflows to almost $1.3 billion, coming in line with ongoing market volatility.

Spot Bitcoin ETF flows since Jan. 26, 2026. Source: SoSoValue

By contrast, ETFs tracking altcoins such as Ether (ETH), XRP (XRP) and Solana (SOL) recorded modest inflows of $14 million, $19.6 million and $1.2 million, respectively.

Is institutional adoption moving beyond ETFs?

The ongoing sell-off in Bitcoin ETFs comes as BTC trades below the ETF creation cost basis of $84,000, suggesting new ETF shares are being issued at a loss and placing pressure on fund flows.

Market observers say that the slump is unlikely to trigger further mass sell-offs in ETFs.

“My guess is vast majority of assets in spot BTC ETFs stay put regardless,” ETF analyst Nate Geraci wrote on X on Monday.

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Source: Nate Geraci

Thomas Restout, CEO of institutional liquidity provider B2C2, echoed the sentiment, noting that institutional ETF investors are generally resilient. Still, he hinted that a shift toward onchain trading may be underway.

Related: VistaShares launches Treasury ETF with options-based Bitcoin exposure

“The benefit of institutions coming in and buying ETFs is they’re far more resilient. They will sit on their views and positions for longer,” Restout said in a Rulematch Spot On podcast on Monday.

“I think the next level of transformation is institutions actually trading crypto, rather than just using securitized ETFs. We’re expecting the next wave of institutions to be the ones trading the underlying assets directly,” he noted.