IOTA Co-Founders At Loggerheads Over Embezzlement Accusations
Sergey Ivancheglo has announced to the IOTA community that he will be seeking legal redress against fellow IOTA co-founder David Sønstebø. The dispute also allegedly involves some 25,000,000 MIOTA tokens valued at $7.7 million as at press time and the funding of JINN labs.
Former IOTA Foundation Director Threatens Legal Action
In a tweet posted on Sunday (February 2, 2020) former IOTA Foundation Director and IOTA co-founder Sergey Ivancheglo popularly known as Come-from-Beyond (CFB) informed the project’s community that henceforth, the working relationship between him and fellow IOTA co-founder David Sønstebø has been dissolved.
I notify the #IOTA community that I no longer work with David Sønstebø and am contacting my lawyers to get my 25 Ti from him. He refuses to transfer the iotas to make me act for his own benefit and against mine.
— Come-from-Beyond (@c___f___b) February 2, 2020
CFB also said he plans to engage in legal actions against Sønstebø over embezzlement claims and his refusal to hand over some 25,000,000 MIOTA token currently valued at $7.7 million. The tweet posted by CFB reads:
“I notify the #IOTA community that I no longer work with David Sønstebø and am contacting my lawyers to get my 25 Ti from him. He refuses to transfer the iotas to make me act for his own benefit and against mine.”
Furthermore, the former IOTA Foundation director has called for Sønstebø’s resignation.
The embezzlement accusations reportedly pertain to the funding of JINN labs. The company believed to be the precursor for the IOTA project and is currently developing a trinary microprocessor for IOTA’s hardware division.
Responding to the tweet, Sønstebø released a statement saying CFB was voted unto the IOTA Foundation Board of directors to lead the development of Coo-less IOTA architecture which he failed to deliver on and later opted to quit the foundation. According to Sønstebø’s statement, CFB’s failure to honor the agreement was surprising. He further remarked that:
“IOTA is too mature and has too much momentum in the real world to be single-handedly held hostage by someone who wants the entire protocol to conform to his VR-MMO company. It’s a sad day for me, but a great one for IOTA.”
Ivancheglo’s History With the Foundation
Back in August 2018, a leaked conversation between founding members of the project revealed a skirmish between Ivancheglo and fellow co-founder Dominik Scheiner regarding the proposed nomination for Ivancheglo and Serguei Popov, another co-founder, to join the IOTA Foundation’s Board of directors. An excerpt from the leaked conversation reads:
“I inform everyone that I no longer trust Dominik Schiener and I think he should quit the IOTA Foundation for the better future of IOTA.”
According to the conversation, Scheiner found no concrete reasons for the pair to join the board and tried getting this information from Ivancheglo without any success. Expressing his resistance to the idea even further, Scheiner said:
“Good luck. IOTA AS will have some serious legal issues with the advisor tokens and the impending tax audit. I am done with this. I am done with being threatened. If this is the course of action that both of you want to take, then I’m all for it. If you want to be enemies, let’s fight.”
Despite Scheiner’s objections, the pair joined the board. However, less than a year after joining the board, Ivancheglo left the foundation, sold the tokens and started a virtual games development company dubbed Paracosm.
In other crypto-related disputes, ousted co-founder of Beijing-based bitcoin (BTC) mining giant Bitmain, Micree Zhan, released an open letter on Monday (January 6, 2020) regarding the firms plan to lay off some 50% of its workforce.
As reported by Blockonomi, Zhan said the plan is a mistake and the crypto mining giant cannot play suicide.
Bitmain reportedly fired up to 50% of its workforce for the first time back in December 2018 after experiencing a consistent decline throughout the year.
The crypto mining giant also found itself in a legal battle with ex-employees over violation of a non-compete agreement back in June 2019.
The post IOTA Co-Founders At Loggerheads Over Embezzlement Accusations appeared first on Blockonomi.
OhNoCryptocurrency via https://www.ohnocrypto.com/ @Osato Avan-Nomayo, @Khareem Sudlow