British serial entrepreneur missing as $1.4m bitcoin is apparently stolen

Almost $1.5m of bitcoins formerly held by cryptocurrency exchange Moolah have gone missing, after the exchange declared bankruptcy. The cash is believed to be in the personal wallet of the company’s founder and chief executive, Alex Green, who has not been heard from since Moolah went bust.
In the last public communication from Green on 19 October, he revealed that he was previously known as Ryan Kennedy until a name change by deed poll ‘in an attempt to start my life over and have some peace’.
As Kennedy, he had gained notoriety among communities including British fans of anime Japanese cartoons, as well as bitcoin investors, for a series of failed business ventures including Flirble, a web hosting service that ran for two months and Lemon, a bitcoin mining firm that shut down in 2013.
Others had linked him to the names Ryan Albright, Ryan Fletcher and Ryan Gentle before he disappeared and re-emerged at the beginning of this year to start bitcoin exchange Moolah as Alex Green.
The final saga started in July 2014, when a rival to Moolah, called Mintpal, was the target of a hack which lost it $2m of bitcoin. Green and three others bought Mintpal a few weeks later, and integrated 70,000 accounts at the exchange into Moolah.

This post was published at The Guardian on 23 October 2014 11.32 BST.