NFT Co-Founder Faces Lawsuit Over Crypto Wallet Dispute

The world of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) has been rocked by a lawsuit that has been filed against one of the co-founders of the Rebase project, Edmond Truong. The lawsuit has been brought by Krzysztof Gagacki, who claims to be a co-founder of the project and alleges that Truong has acted in bad faith by misappropriating $2 million into a separate wallet that is owned and controlled by him without Gagacki’s consent.

In the filing, which was made on April 17, 2023, in a United States District Court in California, Gagacki accuses Truong of eight separate complaints, including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, defamation, and trademark infringement. He is demanding a jury trial, claiming that Truong has “gone rogue” by stealing money from a joint crypto wallet and ousting Gagacki from the firm.

According to Gagacki, the professional relationship between the two had deteriorated by October 27, 2022, when Truong breached their partnership contract. Gagacki claims that he owns a 50% share of the funds in the joint crypto wallet but that Truong refuses to provide him with the private keys to the digital wallet.

Gagacki further alleges that Truong has “ousted” him from the business by presenting himself as the “sole owner” and “decision maker” for Rebase. He claims that Truong has made several defamatory statements to the firm’s business contacts about him, causing damage to his reputation.

Furthermore, Gagacki claims that Truong has intentionally interfered with several prospective deals that he had been working on for the firm. One of these deals involved American celebrity Bella Hadid, who featured in the firm’s Cy-B3lla NFT project. The filing alleges that Hadid refused further collaboration with the project after it was made apparent to her that the two co-founders had clashed.

It is unclear when the professional relationship between Truong and Gagacki started to deteriorate, but Gagacki claims that Truong has been acting in bad faith by misappropriating funds and making defamatory statements about him. The lawsuit is expected to be closely watched by the NFT community, which has seen explosive growth in recent years. As the use of NFTs continues to expand into different industries, legal disputes like this one could become more common.

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Dems Seen as Good for Bitcoin, Says Crypto Betting Market Founder

In brief

  • Rob Levy is co-founder and president of Hxro, a crypto betting market.
  • From his perspective, people seem to think Democratic control in Washington will be better for crypto.
  • He pointed to stimulus checks and policies from the Federal Reserve that could spur asset growth.

Speaking a day after portions of the US Capitol were overrun by pro-Trump protestors, Rob Levy, co-founder and president of crypto prediction market Hxro (pronounced “hero”), indicated the cryptocurrency industry is looking forward to a transition of power in Washington and the stability that may bring.

“I think, in general, the Democrats taking control is seen as friendly for crypto,” he told Matthew Aron on the Decrypt Daily podcast, only slightly hedging his forecast.

“We saw at the end of December [US Treasury Secretary] Mnuchin coming out with some more harsh words for Bitcoin and crypto in general,” he said, likely referring to “rushed” rule-making by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network that would require large transactions to crypto wallets to be recorded and/or reported to FinCEN. “We’re not going to be thrown curveballs like that, in the minds of the public, with Democrats running the US. And so that, in general, is friendly.”

Hxro is a gamified market that allows users to bet on whether an asset price will go up or down in a specified amount of time. Levy, who gets to see his users react to political developments in real-time, came with some predictions about what Dem control will mean for American’s checkbooks as well as for oversight of the apolitical US Federal Reserve.

The Democrats look set to embrace a liberal fiscal policy and “are more apt to push through bigger stimulus checks,” suggested Levy. Though a December 2020 proposal to send $2,000 to most Americans (instead of $600) failed in the Senate, that could be revisited now that Democrats are set to take control of the upper chamber.

Fiscal policy measures geared toward putting more money into citizens’ pockets goes hand in hand with central bank efforts to increase the money supply.

“This whole monetary policy of easy money, it’s not going away,” he said. “This policy of…we’re gonna buy all assets, the Fed’s gonna buy government bonds, they’re gonna just flood the streets with money, it’s not bearish for any asset, really.”

Including Bitcoin.

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Former Bitcoin.com CEO sues oracle over 37.5M allegedly unpaid tokens

Mate Tokay, Bitcoin.com’s former CEO, is taking legal action against a small-cap crypto he advised for reportedly failing to pay him 37.5 million BRG tokens worth $525,000.

Tokay claims that he was never paid for his services, despite the project using his name for recognition to attract investment for Bridge.link’s $8 million initial exchange offering three months ago. He adds that Bridge’s founder Sina Estavi offered to compensate Tokay with “a far lower sum” than what was agreed in their contract, adding that other advisors have allegedly received similar treatment.

At current prices, the reportedly promised stash of 37.5 million BRG would be worth $525,000 in total.

Tokay further alleges that the circulating supply for BRG claimed by Bridge.link is inaccurate, noting he has informed “other crypto industry market leaders, price aggregations sites, and relevant exchanges” of the “massive” discrepancy between BRG’s purported and actual and circulating supply.

Tokay warned that the discrepancy could leave BRG investors vulnerable to a “classic pump and dump,” describing Bridge.link’s actions as “market manipulation.”

While crypto market data aggregator CoinGecko currently does not list data for BRG’s circulating supply or market cap, CoinMarketCap ranks BRG as the 231st-largest crypto asset with a capitalization of $141 million.

Bridge Oracle 180-day price chart. Source: CoinGecko

BRG has slumped from $0.019 to $0.017 over the past 24 hours, suggesting that some investors are dumping amid Tokay’s lawsuit — with more than 97% of volume originating from a single exchange.

Despite the legal action, the price of BRG is up more than 200% over the past 30 days.

Bridge.link did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.