Quick take:
- Mark Karpeles has announced plans to launch a non-fungible token project ‘likely’ on Polygon.
- The former Mt Gox CEO said he will Airdrop NFTs to customers of the defunct bitcoin exchange platform.
- To be eligible, customers must have registered with the platform between 2010 and 2014.
Mark Karpeles has announced plans to launch a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace ‘likely’ on the Polygon blockchain. The former Mt Gox CEO said the launch will debut an NFT Airdrop for customers of the defunct bitcoin exchange platform. To be eligible for the Airdrop, customers must have signed up with the platform between 2010 and 2014.
Announcing the NFT Airdrop on his Twitter page on March 28, Karpeles tweeted:
Diving deeper into the details, Karpeles said the NFTs won’t feature any type of artwork whilst also stressing they will be minted free of gas fees, which means they won’t use the Ethereum blockchain, adding that Polygon “looks like a much better choice at this point.”
On the website explaining the project, Karpeles said that each NFT will be numbered (unit256) and will match each Mt Gox customer account number to prevent any NFT from being created outside the range of Mt Gox accounts. The first account numbered 1 was created on Jul. 17, 2010, while the final account numbered 1066097 was created at 1.14 AM UTC on Feb. 25, 2014.
The NFTs will be ERC721 compliant with more features added to cover specific use cases. Each token will be stored in two-weight. One represents the bitcoin balance for the specific account, and the second part for the fiat balance is presented as 1/100th JPY as at the rates published by MUFG on April 23, 2014.
Users have the option to decide against the tokens being stored as two-weight, in which case both values will remain undefined.
The Mt Gox NFT may be used in various ways to create experiences, the website explains adding that “ownership of a MtGox crypto token is also proof of someone being an early Bitcoin adopter, but also proof of having lived and survived one of the most covered Bitcoin-related disasters.”
The Mt Gox NFT could serve as proof that the owner was there in the early days of bitcoin and now they can prove it on the blockchain.
Other use cases detailed in the document include using the NFTs to gain access to members-only spaces, integrating a community-based DAO system, and gaining access to future NFT drops.
Update: Commenting on our tweet for this article, Karpeles clarified that “the NFT will have an artwork,” adding that ” it is [still] a work in progress.”
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