The Mt. Gox Protest Sign That Captured Crypto’s First Crisis Is Now up for Auction
Over a decade after it became a symbol of bitcoin’s earliest and most infamous meltdown, Kolin Burges’ hand-scrawled protest sign is heading to auction.
Back in February 2014, Burges—an early bitcoin investor—stood outside the Tokyo headquarters of Mt. Gox, then the world’s largest crypto exchange, holding a cardboard sign that demanded: “Mt. Gox, Where Is Our Money?” He had flown from London after the platform abruptly halted withdrawals, sparking panic across the crypto world.
Now, 11 years later, that very sign is being auctioned on the Scarce.City platform with a reserve price of 4.5 BTC—worth about $383,000. The auction opens Friday and runs through April 3.
“At the time, I never thought the sign itself would hold any value,” Burges said in an interview with CoinDesk. “Maybe I’d write a book one day, but the cardboard? It just didn’t seem important. But here we are.”
Burges said the decision to travel to Japan wasn’t exactly calculated. “I just woke up one morning and knew I had to go. There was no plan—I just had this sinking feeling something was wrong.”
As withdrawals remained frozen and communication from Mt. Gox grew increasingly vague, Burges’ lone protest captured the attention of both crypto insiders and traditional media outlets. The image of him standing in the snow, confronting CEO Mark Karpeles, became emblematic of the crisis.
“The moment I finally faced Karpeles, it was surreal,” he recalled. “He gave me the usual excuses—technical issues, temporary problems—but it was clear he wasn’t being transparent.”
Behind the scenes, Burges says the exchange was trying to manage its optics.
“They invited us inside to continue protesting out of sight from the press,” he said. “It felt like damage control, not accountability.”
In a particularly telling moment, Burges remembered a Mt. Gox staffer trying to pay for drinks with a company credit card—only to have it declined.
“That was when I knew the wheels were really coming off,” he said.
Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy just days after Burges began his protest. In total, around 850,000 bitcoins were lost or stolen—worth billions today.
Years later, in 2021, a Tokyo court cleared Karpeles of embezzlement charges but gave him a suspended sentence for data manipulation.
Karpeles has since re-entered the crypto scene. In 2022, he launched a crypto ratings firm called Ungox, and last year he founded a new trading platform, EllipX.
Speaking at Korea Blockchain Week in August 2024, Karpeles reflected on the Mt. Gox debacle, saying modern tools like blockchain analytics and third-party custodians might have prevented the disaster entirely.
