Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles is shilling a cat-themed meme coin called “Chief Pussy” after a group of Pump Fan traders convinced him to use his long-deceased cat Tibane to promote the meme coin.
Pump Fun account “w$kapex2” created the Solana-based token nine days ago and managed to catch the attention of Mr. Karpeles yesterday after offering a share of the token and 100% of the trading fees.
Karpeles said he was shocked that people would trade tokens based on his cat, saying, “I know it’s probably short-lived, but it’s interesting to see how it’s happening.”
Read more: Who owns MtGox’s rights to billions of dollars in Bitcoin?
He promoted the token on his X account, where he said he likes to see people learn about the MtGox incident and the “lore” surrounding it (like stories about pet cats and Russian hackers).
As for how the fee will be used, he said, “We plan to donate a portion of the fee to research into CKD in cats so that other cats and their owners don’t have to go through the same thing.”
Karpeles endorsed the token on Wednesday and publicly endorsed it on Thursday, after which the token soared 2,594% to a market cap of $1.8 million.
However, since that high, in typical meme coin fashion, it has fallen almost 89% in one day, leaving its market cap at $246,000.
The price action of “$ChiefPussy” appears to be pulling the rug from under you.
From then on, he continued to burn the tokens he received.
The relationship between Mark Karpeles’ cats and Mt.Gox goes back a long way
Karpeles acquired cryptocurrency exchange MtGox from founder Jed McCaleb in 2011. Three years later, the exchange, one of the largest of its kind at the time, declared bankruptcy after losing hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins ($BTC).
Two Russian hackers, Alexei Vilyuchenko and Alexander Werner, stole at least $647,000. $BTC During the life of the exchange.
In one bankruptcy filing, the exchange announced it had lost 750,000 users. $BTC and your own 100,000 $BTCtotaling $480 million in 2014.
Karpeles was found guilty of one count of data falsification and received a suspended sentence, avoiding prison time.
Needless to say, my cat Tibane was with me. A few days after taking over Mount Gox, Karpeles told the story of how the cat survived Japan’s massive earthquake.
The company he bought MtGox from was called Tibanne Co. Ltd.
Read more: Rest in peace, Mr. Gox, the crypto-trading hamster who beat Bitcoin and Warren Buffett.
Tibane took a long-haul flight from Paris to Japan, which required him to properly tip and issue his own passport showing that he had been vaccinated.
Chainstone Labs CEO Bruce Fenton claimed in 2019 that Tibane was also a member of the Bitcoin Foundation, recalling that Karpeles had bought the cat a lifetime membership equal to his own.
Fenton added that there are about 50 members. $BTCa figure equivalent to $4.1 million today.
Mt Gox has been in bankruptcy proceedings for years since its collapse and claims to have repaid around 19,500 creditors as of October last year.
However, many creditors have not yet been repaid, and Mt. Gox has extended the repayment deadline until October 2026.
In 2024, Karpeles launched another cryptocurrency exchange called EllipX, and in 2023 he was given the title of “Duke of Joseon” by the so-called “cyber nation.”
