MtGox’s former CEO is now shilling a cat-themed memecoin

MtGox’s former CEO Mark Karpelès is shilling a cat-themed memecoin called “ChiefPussy” after a group of Pump Fun traders convinced him to promote it using his long-dead cat Tibane. 

Pump Fun account “w$kapex2” created the Solana-based token nine days ago and successfully caught Karpelès’ attention yesterday after giving him a share of the tokens and offering 100% of the trading fees. 

Karpelès was shocked that people would be trading the token based on his cat and said, “I know it’ll probably be short lived but it’s interesting for me to see how that’s happening.”

Read more: Who owns MtGox claims to billions of dollars in bitcoin?

He promoted the token on his X account, where he said he liked seeing people learn about the MtGox case and its surrounding “lore,” including stories about his cat and Russian hackers. 

As for where the fees will go, he said, “I’ll be donating part of the fees to feline CKD research in hope this helps other cats and their owners to not go through the same thing.”

Karpelès acknowledged the token on Wednesday, and then openly supported it on Thursday, before the token shot up 2,594% to a market cap of $1.8 million.

Since this high, however, it’s fallen in typical memecoin fashion by almost 89% in one day to a market cap of $246,000. 

He since been burning the tokens he received. 

Mark Karpelès’ cat and MtGox go way back 

Karpelès acquired the crypto exchange MtGox from its original founder Jed McCaleb in 2011. Three years later, the exchange, one of the biggest of its kind at the time, declared bankruptcy after losing hundreds of thousands of bitcoins (BTC). 

Two Russian hackers, Alexey Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner, stole at least 647,000 BTC across the exchange’s lifetime.

In one bankruptcy filing, the exchange said it had lost 750,000 user BTC and 100,000 of its own BTC, a total of $480 million in 2014. 

Karpelès was found guilty of one charge for falsifying data and received a suspended sentence that allowed him to avoid prison time. 

It goes without saying that Tibane the cat was along for the ride. Karpelès shared how, days after taking over MtGox, the cat managed to survive a major earthquake in Japan.

The company he acquired MtGox with was called Tibanne Co. Ltd. 

Read more: RIP Mr. Goxx, the crypto trading hamster who beat Bitcoin and Warren Buffet

Tibane also travelled from Paris to Japan on a long-haul flight that meant he had to be issued his very own passport that showed he was properly chipped and vaccinated.  

Chainstone Labs CEO Bruce Fenton claimed in 2019 that Tibane was even a member of the Bitcoin Foundation, recalling that Karpelès bought the cat a lifetime membership to match his own.

Fenton added that membership was roughly 50 BTC, a figure worth $4.1 million today. 

Since MtGox’s collapse, years of bankruptcy proceedings have taken place, and as of last October, it claims to have repaid roughly 19,500 creditors.

Many creditors still haven’t been paid yet, however, and MtGox has extended its repayment deadlines to October 2026.

Karpelès launched another crypto exchange called EllipX back in 2024, and in 2023 was given the title “Duke of Joseon” by a so-called “cyber nation state.”

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