The 32-year-old Frenchman, who currently works as an engineer in Japan, said the exchange had been profitable and the money he had spent on personal items came from his own funds, not customers’ accounts.
The exchange has a list of about 127,000 creditors. Many have said they don’t expect to get their money back and postings related to the exchange’s collapse on online bitcoin forums have died down. “I moved on,” said Hiroki Minematsu, an owner of technology companies in Nagasaki who deposited 70 bitcoins at Mt. Gox. “It would be nice if they find out what had exactly happened to serve my curiosity, but I threw away my hope for my investment a long time ago.”