JBC2019 — Brock Pierce Keynote
Brock Pierce headlined the first day of the Japan Blockchain Conference 2019 in Yokohama today (and I guess, if you headline the first day, it means you headline the conference overall!).
He started off by holding the exchanges to account.
However, the topic then very quickly moved on to Mt Gox. To date, the trustee has sold cryptocurrencies with a value of an estimated $630mm, while 137,892 Bitcoin and 162,106 Bitcoin Cash remain in the exchange wallet, to satisfy more than 24,000 creditors.
According to Brock, there is one big obstacle in resolving those creditor claims — a bad actor, CoinLab.
The dispute stems from CoinLab’s 2012 contract giving it official Gox partner status in the U.S. and Canada. CoinLab claims Gox breached this contract by not revealing adequate data on existing clients.
Both sides were reportedly dissatisfied with the agreements from early on. CoinLab reportedly needed to fulfil U.S. licensing and regulatory requirements before it could act as Gox’s U.S. agent. Mt Gox claimed this never happened.
According to Brock, CoinLab made off with $5mm in Mt Gox’s customer assets.
In Japan, Mt Gox went into civil rehabilitation, where claims against Mt Gox had to be re-filed by October 2018. That period has been extended to March 15, 2019, with Brock urging the audience to complete the paperwork immediately if in fact they have claims against Mt Gox.
Brock then went on to offer what he described as a “fair & simple solution”:
- The estimated $1.3bn value in cryptocurrency and fiat goes to the creditors as quickly as possible
- Aggressive recovery effort pursuing the missing coins with near-term benefits to creditors by creating a special purpose Gox coin
- Relaunch the exchange with creditors receiving an ownership interest
- Address the CoinLab lawsuit with a goal of moving it back to the US to be litigated or dismissed
This was presented as a “call to action” with a community being formed to advance this agenda. You can join as per the below details.
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