The original founder of Mt. Gox, Jed McCaleb, has revealed that he is working on a secret bitcoin-related project, but he isn’t giving much away.
McCaleb is the creator of Mt. Gox, for years the world’s largest and best-known bitcoin exchange. After he sold his stake in Mt. Gox in 2011, he created Ripple and made a few interesting investments along the way.
Now McCaleb wants to get back into the game. But the big question is – with what?
The investor claims he is working on “something that will be better for bitcoin and better for you”, and is looking for alpha testers for his mystery project. This is all that he has revealed so far:
“When I sold Mt. Gox a few years ago, bitcoin was trading at less than a dollar. Today bitcoin exists in a new environment. Mt. Gox is struggling to keep up. Now, I am building something that will be better for Bitcoin and better for you. I’m looking for alpha testers.”
So what is it all about?
In short, we don’t know.
There is plenty of speculation, but for the time being there is no concrete information on the project. The fact that McCaleb is a rather enigmatic and doesn’t like to talk to the media doesn’t help, either.
McCaleb’s track record speaks for itself. He is the quintessential peer-to-peer pioneer and he didn’t shy away from controversial projects, like file sharing services.
However, since then McCaleb has shifted to more down to earth projects like Mt. Gox, followed by Ripple. The latter is still in beta, but it is supposed to act as a distributed payment and currency exchange network, with a native currency of its own (XRP).
It is a somewhat controversial idea. Some members of the bitcoin community argue that it is too centralized, while others believe it is positive step in the evolution of digital currencies.
So, judging by his earlier efforts, we should expect something provocative, controversial and, of course, innovative. Other than that, it’s anyone’s guess.
Looking for devs, testers, designers
Since the project is secret, it also has an appropriately named website: secretbitcoinproject.com. Needless to say, the site doesn’t offer much in the way of information, but it does include a call for developers, alpha testers and a designer.
TechCrunch reports that McCaleb has already managed to raise some funding solely through instant messages and Skype, though this is unconfirmed at this point in time.