TEZOS: Anatomy of a Startup Catastrophy

There are only a few months between the most successful ICO of 2017 and a turmoil of fights, lies and a flood of lawsuits at Tezos. In the meantime the company grew richer every day.

Tezos generated $232 million in fall 2017 through a sensational Initial Coin Offering (ICO). It was the largest of its kind to date. But instead of working on the promised product, the founders publicly quarreled with their leaders. The following class action suits for securities fraud could become a negative precedent for many companies that have collected funds through ICOs.

Ethereum on their honeymoon

Tezos is first and foremost the story of the young couple Kathleen and Arthur Breitman. Kathleen Breitman worked at Cornell University in New York as a consultant for Accenture, among others. After a short time as Strategy Associate with the Blockchain consortium R3 she founded with her husband Tezos. It was her husband Arthur, who brought the enthusiasm for Bitcoin thanks to his mathematical background — at a time when hardly anyone knew about it.