Like the King Solomon’s Lost Mines or the treasures of the Spanish Main, the 750,000 BTC lost in the Mt. Gox implosion isn’t gone – it’s just really, really hard to get back. The solution, then, is a sort of treasure hunt/dedicated vigilante mission with a bit of crypto thrown in. It’s called Goxcoin.

Essentially, with the help of Mt. Gox and Mark Karpeles, goxcoin would replace the bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox. For every bitcoin you lost, you’d get one goxcoin. Owners of goxcoin would receive dividends based on how many bitcoin are recovered over the next few years and users can trade them with each other or buy them up if they assume the recovery effort is going well. All the goxcoin organizers would need is a list of Mt. Gox transactions and a ledger of accounts.

In theory, this would encourage bounty hunters to start figuring out what happened at Mt. Gox, creating a sort of vigilante bailout that would, at the very least, give the victims of Mt. Gox some recourse. Just as treasure hunters don’t want to start digging for free, folks who go hunting for Gox’s Coin can potentially get for a 10% payout for every bunch of bitcoins found.

Writes the team at humint:

These digital tokens, representing Mt.Gox’s Bitcoin obligation to the customer, would be transferable and limited in supply. There would be only one issuance of Goxcoins.

Using an on-blockchain token allows for trackable balances on a public ledger, enabling the pro-rata distribution of any BTC that may be recovered through foresensic investigation, law enforcement, and/or the liquidation of Mt.Gox as a corporate entity.

Will it work in practice? It will work only if the higher ups at Mt. Gox play along. This isn’t a finalized project, it’s an idea. And, like all ideas, it takes effort and action to implement.

While the potential for funds being recovered are close to nil right now, it’s still possible. “Goxcoins represent the claim on a single bitcoin worth of recovery,” said Adam B. Levine, one of the co-creators. “So if you believe the coins will be recovered, it makes sense to hold them.”

Bitcoin is nearly a mania, but, thanks to ideas like this one, it is getting less crazy and more predictable. While no one can save everything from the Mt. Gox disaster, these tokens can at least soak up a little of the damage.