Bitcoin Villain Mark Karpelès Gets into Web Hosting Business

Mark Karpelès, CEO of collapsed bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, is looking to make a future in the web hosting business.

He launched a new web hosting service, Forever.net, which is registered under both his name and Mt Gox's parent company, Tibanne.

"TIBANNE Co.Ltd. is a Tokyo, Japan-based corporation founded in 2009 by talented technopreneurs," the website says on its about section.

"TIBANNE specializes in web hosting, IP transit, VoIP, software development and network administration. We are currently engaged in the research and development of new and existing services to produce innovative solutions for our clients."

"Unlike other subjects, I am able to discuss Forever.net," Karpelès said in an email correspondence with NewsBtc.com.

"We've been doing this since 2009, and even before founding Tibanne I help founding a couple other hosting companies (one still has its site online, however the offers listed on there are far outdated, not sure what they are doing today."

Karpelès noted that Tibanne faced severe loss of revenue and increased legal costs due to the Mt Gox saga.

"As such we are now controlling expenses and focusing on revenue generating in order to be able to do our part," he said.

"With Forever.net we make use of existing resources and provide services based on the technology we developed over the years."

Karpelès added that he is considering cryptocurrency payment option for the web hosting service.

"We are also considering accepting payments in BTC/LTC/etc. For information[,] Tibanne's other hosting service KalyHost.com has been accepting BTC since Sept. 2010 and generated since then a total revenue of over 13000 bitcoins (we will soon be releasing a new version of the KalyHost.com website too)," he said.

Mt Gox, which at one point hosted 80% of trades in the popular digital currency bitcoin, collapsed after reporting that 850,000 bitcoins were stolen in what it claims was the result of a two-year-long cyber attack. The company later said it recovered about 200,000 of the missing bitcoins.

The company filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan on 28 February and subsequently in the US.