I don't see anything exceptional about him.  Bankruptcy proceedings are always v e r y  s l o w things.  From the papers given out at the recent meeting, he has done quite a bit of work actually.  The basic idea may seem simple (collect the remaining assets, collect claims, etc.) but there are lots of details that do not show up in the report.  For instance, MtGOX used several banks through its life, had branches and dealings in other countries, etc.. Also, a bankruptcy case was opened against MtGOX in the US, and it was not long ago that the US judge finally recognized the precedence of the Japanese courts.

Furthermore, Kobayashi had to learn enough about bitcoin to avoid mistakes that could cost him millions in lawsuits.  We don't know whether  those 220'000 BTC were really "lost and found", but the episode suggests that MtGOX's accounting must be a frightening mess.   I bet that Kobayashi still hasn't decided how he will handle the claims -- hence the postponement.

I do not blame anyone. But Gox had half a year to give some evidence of the stolen coins. I can understand that there is a big chaos. But I do not understand that all coins disappear from Goxs sight. There are no clear statements from Kobayashi about the 600,000 coins . And the Tokyo Police Launch Investigation just a month ago. What the hell they have done in the meantime? And than they told that they suspect roughly 27,000 BTC were stolen from the website. Sorry, but WTF? 27,000 BTC? What about the others?

If these 600,000 really never exist, why is Mark not be prosecuted because of delayed filing of insolvency and running a ponzi? Mark already has a new company on a similar field. He even wants again to accept Bitcoins. How crazy is that? This is so as if Bernard Madoff would have directly launched a new company in the financial sector.

Someone have to explain this. But I have given up hope that Mr. Kobayashi will somehow help us in the matter. I would love to redlist the 600,000 Coins. But of course no one will tell us where they are or whether they have ever exist. We only have 200,000 and that's only because the community have found them. Kobayashi has no idea and does nothing in this point.  I'm sure, if people does not have reveal the cause, the 200,000 would have been "disappeared" too.

Where did you get that from?  Mark himself claimed that he found the 220'000 BTC in an old-format wallet, after filing for bankruptcy.  Whether he had really forgotten about them is an open question, but AFAIK it was him who "found" them and told the court about them.  Kobayashi had them transferred to an address that he controls (it says so in the papers given out at the last meeting). 

NO&T are one of the "big four" law firms in japan, with hundreds of lawyers - they cannot really be said to specialise in anything. In addition, Nobuaki Kobayashi specializes in bankruptcy and restructuring as well as M&A.

http://www.noandt.com/en/lawyers/nbk.php

I've not watched this whole scenario for awhile, but Gox stated publicly they had a cold wallet with an average of 98% of their total Bitcoin holdings in it.  How can someone have stolen these coins?  Even if they had a hacker who stole coins from within the business itself (Karpeles mentioned in one interview that one bit of advice he would give other Bitcoin companies would be hiring full-time security guards) how can they have stolen any of the coins in the cold wallet?  And if the paper wallets were stolen, it would seem there would be some sort of security and/or a limited number of people with access to the coins making it easy to determine who the criminal was.

Finally, and this is just a hunch, but Charlie Shrem was arrested in January 2014 for money laundering (Mt Gox went offline in February 2014) after working with Federal authorities on ways to regulate Bitcoin during which he revealed different "money laundering" services he had performed in the past in the hopes that: 1. The Feds would be lenient because he was helping them learn how to regulate Bitcoin and 2.  Bitcoin was originally not legally considered property so money laundering was technically impossible in the early days of its release.  Seeing that Charlie Shrem was put under house arrest for information he voluntarily gave up, it seems likely that some of the information he released could have implicated Mark Karpeles in a criminal investigation of a similar sort and that could be where the shenanigans began.

This story still makes no sense to me, all I know is that something is very fishy, whether it is coming from Gox or governments, and seeing the track records of governments my bet is that they're fucking with us, though I'm not sure exactly how.

Start with the obvious. Kobayashi admits he now holds 220K Mt. Gox bitcoins worth over $100 million. No company that once had control over $100 million in liquid assets ever needed to declare bankruptcy, especially when it's only been around for three or so years. This bankruptcy is a hoax. It's designed to transfer control of these assets to someone else who has the deviousness and financial wherewithal to manipulate the legal system.

From what I know, the purpose of bankruptcy (full name: "bankruptcy protection") is to halt all individual lawsuits by employees, creditors and investors against the company, so that a single court (1) gets to evaluate whether the company has a reasonable chance of recovering financially and paying off all its obbligations, or, if not, (2) orders that the company be closed, all its assets be sold or auctioned, and the proceeds be distributed fairly among all claimants.

I had understood that MtGOX was forced to file for bankruptcy protection because many clients were already suing it or were about to do so.  The Japanese court easily concluded that MtGOX could never recover from such big losses, even after Mark found the 220'000  BTC that he had "forgotten about", so it determined liquidation.

That may be what the lawyers argued, but AFAIK it did not stick.    The concept of money laundering is more general; the money can be  (and often is) converted to non-money merchandise, such as boats, diamonds, real estate, etc.

http://money.howstuffworks.com/money-laundering.htm

According to what I understood of the charges, "dirty" money from Silk Road customers was turned into bitcoins by Charlie and his partner, sent to the SilkRoad merchants, and the bitcoins from SilkRoad's fees were to be converted to (or used as) money by Ross.  This way, they hoped, the source of Ross's wealth would appear to be legitimate (bitcoins, rather than drugs).

EDIT: typo "SilkRoad"

(typos OCR)


So, 60,149.10 USD for a wire transfer? Wow.