CoinLab suing MtGox for $75 milliion?

[Herodes]

Interesting that the contract between gox and coinlab only had two signatures. The witness was Mark. Could that make the contract void ?

[repentance]

OK, the last part of this bit of the press release is interesting.

However, Mt. Gox did not fulfill key terms of the agreement. Mt. Gox continued to market to North American customers and failed to provide CoinLab with account reconciliation data, service access and other information essential to fulfilling the terms of agreement, eventually attempting to ban all customers who had worked with CoinLab.

http://coinlab.com/press

[crazy_rabbit]

OK, the last part of this bit of the press release is interesting.

However, Mt. Gox did not fulfill key terms of the agreement. Mt. Gox continued to market to North American customers and failed to provide CoinLab with account reconciliation data, service access and other information essential to fulfilling the terms of agreement, eventually attempting to ban all customers who had worked with CoinLab.

http://coinlab.com/press

That is interesting! Did I say interesting? I mean depressing. So angry about this. We had this incredible shot in the sun and it's all been screwed by GOX.

[jubalix]

OK, the last part of this bit of the press release is interesting.

However, Mt. Gox did not fulfill key terms of the agreement. Mt. Gox continued to market to North American customers and failed to provide CoinLab with account reconciliation data, service access and other information essential to fulfilling the terms of agreement, eventually attempting to ban all customers who had worked with CoinLab.

http://coinlab.com/press

That is interesting! Did I say interesting? I mean depressing. So angry about this. We had this incredible shot in the sun and it's all been screwed by GOX.

Its ok, taking out the cluster $%^K that is Gox, will open the market to better competitors

[darkmule]

That is interesting! Did I say interesting? I mean depressing. So angry about this. We had this incredible shot in the sun and it's all been screwed by GOX.

No it hasn't.  It's just another bump in the road.  There are really only two possibilities here.

A)  Gox was completely fucked in breaching this contract and will be sued out of existence.  If they did that, they're incompetent and we need a temporary vacuum that can be filled by a competent entity.

B)  Gox was correct to breach the contract, and Coinlab was actually the party that fucked up.  In that case, the ill-begotten scheme to move over U.S. Gox users to Coinlab won't happen (I never thought this was a good idea) and Gox will go on.

In either case, we're fine long-term.  Glad I cashed in at $135, even though as usual I missed the "top."

[justusranvier]

A)  Gox was completely fucked in breaching this contract and will be sued out of existence.  If they did that, they're incompetent and we need a temporary vacuum that can be filled by a competent entity.

There's a lot more potential here for disruptive revelations. I'll randomly enumerate a few possibilities.

It could be the case that Mt Gox is unable to deliver the funds they promised to transfer because they don't have them. They could have been operating on a undisclosed fractional reserve of BTC, or of USD, or both due to malice, incompetence, undisclosed hacks, or all of the above. If any of those were true things would get even more exciting than usual.

The more boring explanation is that they just didn't have enough manpower to complete all the steps in time because they were scrambling to keep the exchange operating under the rapidly-increasing load we saw earlier in the year and it took the filing of a lawsuit to get their attention and move this deal to the top of their priority list.

[RationalSpeculator]

Trouble with that document is it's hard to verify it's authenticity.

And based on the terms alleged in the complaint it appears that MtGox's attorneys would be grossly negligent and extremely poor negotiators. Thus, most likely fake and simply someone trolling and Gawker going after page views. Also, no court stamp and not showing up in PACER.

Indeed, Mtgox made a horrible deal with coinlab according to that document.

So coinlab gets all US clients of mtgox and in return coinlab gives 'relationships', 'knowledge', yeah right.

Sign me up Mtgox! I'll get a european license and you give me your european clients and are forbidden to take on any european clients in the future. We will split the profits!

[tvbcof]

There's a lot more potential here for disruptive revelations. I'll randomly enumerate a few possibilities.
...

Another line:

Coinlab realized (after the FINCEN guidance came out which, iirc, came the announcement but not by much) that it was going to be costly and risky since it was clearly just some opening volleys in the abuse yet to come.  Mark and Peter still needed to give their investors/friends something and what these people want are BTC (being late to the party and finding themselves sucking hind tit to a bunch of geeks and garden variety criminals.)  So they engineer a bubble collapse calculated to shake out the highest number of BTC.  The rather questionable figure of $75M seems a bit pulled from the air which lends some strength to the admittedly far-fetched hypothesis.

[moni3z]

dunno how gox fucked this up, or why they would want to handle fiat/money. just run the exchange and get paid in bitcoins from trading fees, let some other fool run the bank funds and take all the heat.

lol so much for the bitcoin foundation

[zebedee]

There's a lot more potential here for disruptive revelations. I'll randomly enumerate a few possibilities.
...

Another line:

Coinlab realized (after the FINCEN guidance came out which, iirc, came the announcement but not by much) that it was going to be costly and risky since it was clearly just some opening volleys in the abuse yet to come.  Mark and Peter still needed to give their investors/friends something and what these people want are BTC (being late to the party and finding themselves sucking hind tit to a bunch of geeks and garden variety criminals.)  So they engineer a bubble collapse calculated to shake out the highest number of BTC.  The rather questionable figure of $75M seems a bit pulled from the air which lends some strength to the admittedly far-fetched hypothesis.

At least as likely as any other explanation I've seen.

[adam3us]

When they sue, why not sue them for bitcoins?

+ 1

No no thats no how it works.  A smart contract is written who's execution is evaluated by all bitcoin miners, and an arbitrator adjudicates and signs the coin multisig releasing assets to the wronged party.  Smart-contracts all the way

Adam

[Chuck Finley]

This might not be a huge concern for mtgox.

First: it's a big lawsuit so it's guaranteed to take years (not including appeals which wouldn't surprise me).

Second: isn't mtgox owned by a Japanese company now? Where are their servers? Even if coinlab could get some quick injunction to stop mtgox from operating in North America while the suit continues they'd have to actually be able to enforce it. Good luck doing that quickly / at all depending on where mtgox has/moves its servers.

Third: even if coinlab is successful at getting a monetary judgment from mtgox that is where their quest begins - THEN they have to actually go about trying to collect the money from mtgox. Due to the global/international nature of the internet (and the ease at which bitcoins can be "lost") that could also take a significant amount of time.

Unless they can get an emergency injunction enforced quickly, it is likely business will continue as usual at mtgox for quite some time.

[adam3us]

There's a link to the court documents in the Gawker article.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/139160091/Coinlab-v-Mt-Gox

Trouble with that document is it's hard to verify it's authenticity.

Do you think it is credible to cite a $75MM loss on a $500k investment?   hmmmm.
what a joke these people are.   need some grown ups.

I am not sure, but if you look at the complaint on one of the websites, it says that the contract itself included a $50M penalty clause for breach that MtGox had there lawyers review and elected to sign.  If they willfully breached the contract in those circumstances the damage seems more than a bit self-inflicted no?  (I see someone posted a link to the now public contract so presumably that $50M and the terms around it can be verified.)

And its not like MtGox have seemingly demonstrated a lot of competence in the internet facing aspects that we can see (various HTTP response codes indicating overloaded systems from web server, massive lag in processing AML, bewildering array of odd-ball indirect payment methods).

When they finally processed my AML after serveral weeks, they declared it to be "temporarily rejected" claiming it was scanned below 300dpi.  Not sure about that - it looked ok to me in the previewer, and was the default scanner setting, but worse now I have to rescan (paying careful attention to dpi advanced options!) and send it back, and that'll probably take another few weeks.

Oh yeah and my fiat might just be jammed up now.  Maybe that fact is propping up the price even as someone else commented  - people taking out via BTC as better than having fiat jammed in mtgox for who knows how long.  Or people potentially trading jammed fiat for potentially less tradeable BTC (in both directions).  Thats not exactly a great market environment.

I wonder actually if the fiat deposits (and even bitcoins) are firewalled from mtgox liability if they dont settle or lose, in terms of like banking separation of client money.  What I put in there to buy my first BTC* is not going to bankrupt me but its still a nuisance.  (*  Except for $6 a redditor tipped me a few days back)

Adam

[jubalix]

This might not be a huge concern for mtgox.

First: it's a big lawsuit so it's guaranteed to take years (not including appeals which wouldn't surprise me).

Second: isn't mtgox owned by a Japanese company now? Where are their servers? Even if coinlab could get some quick injunction to stop mtgox from operating in North America while the suit continues they'd have to actually be able to enforce it. Good luck doing that quickly / at all depending on where mtgox has/moves its servers.

Third: even if coinlab is successful at getting a monetary judgment from mtgox that is where their quest begins - THEN they have to actually go about trying to collect the money from mtgox. Due to the global/international nature of the internet (and the ease at which bitcoins can be "lost") that could also take a significant amount of time.

Unless they can get an emergency injunction enforced quickly, it is likely business will continue as usual at mtgox for quite some time.

I think MtGox agreed to US jurisdiction, thus it may allow a very quick injunction to freeze all Gox assets that a Japanese court would probably just assent to due to the agreement of jurisdiction. I would keep all funds out of Gox until you can see this taking years or not.

[Chuck Finley]

I think MtGox agreed to US jurisdiction

You mean like how they also agreed to hand over their NA customers to coinlab? lol.

Doesn't really matter what they agreed to - at the end of the day a court order is only as good as it is enforceable. You can't just take a court order from any random jurisdiction, show up in another jurisdiction waving it around and expect it will be enforced like a court order from that jurisdiction.

Even if a Japanese court was to uphold a US order (no guarantee that they would regardless of what is written in the contract) that process takes even more time and again they could only touch whatever was in Japan. If the servers are in another country (or the Japanese company is just a shell with nothing the court can touch) there might not be a lot that can be done there.

Coinlab could have a world-wide adventure following these guys around the globe with their lawsuit

[vampire]

I think MtGox agreed to US jurisdiction, thus it may allow a very quick injunction to freeze all Gox assets that a Japanese court would probably just assent to due to the agreement of jurisdiction. I would keep all funds out of Gox until you can see this taking years or not.

The contract is governed by laws of Canada, USA and Japan, if any of the these countries' law or regulation weren't complied with - the contract is void (it is actually is in the contract).

Data privacy laws, were they followed in all three countries?
Financial regulations of selling private accounts?

[tumak]

Other theory:

http://fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html

Under some interpretation, Coinlab would have to pay $15M to get the govt license. They don't have that kind of capital, at least officially.

The deal was made just before fincen "guidance".

Premise: Uncle sam forcing MtGox/Coinlab to comply with financial regulations (simplistically said, pay up huge sum to be a bank, otherwise you'll end up like e-gold). This lawsuit is the the consequence (passing the sucker bag).

Source:
http://p.gw.gd/view/e4f5a9dd
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3757/what-is-the-story-behind-mtgox-and-their-french-bank/3856#3856 (same story, but europe)

[jgarzik]

Other theory:

http://fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html

Under some interpretation, Coinlab would have to pay $15M to get the govt license. They don't have that kind of capital, at least officially.

Well, according to CoinLab http://coinlab.com/press

As an established player in the North American Bitcoin industry—registered and fully compliant with the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)— CoinLab provided Mt. Gox with U.S. financial and investment partnerships necessary to drive more U.S. volume and pave the way for institutional investors and high net-worth individuals to buy and hold large amounts of the digital currency.

[jubalix]

I think MtGox agreed to US jurisdiction, thus it may allow a very quick injunction to freeze all Gox assets that a Japanese court would probably just assent to due to the agreement of jurisdiction. I would keep all funds out of Gox until you can see this taking years or not.

The contract is governed by laws of Canada, USA and Japan, if any of the these countries' law or regulation weren't complied with - the contract is void (it is actually is in the contract).

Data privacy laws, were they followed in all three countries?
Financial regulations of selling private accounts?

Ok there is the classic battle of the forms as to which jurisdiction apply

but in the case where both parties agree to a jurisdiction, then the matter is 99% of the time heard there, and most other countries court will accept this in a civil case.

You don't have to sell anything or reveal any private data. You just in-junct Mt. Gox from removing funds---however usual precedent is an injunction will not sound against normal trade, as if the suit fails, it will have done un reparable damage, and normal trade is just that, not money hiding/siphon off. Further Mt Gox could argue that its is in CL interests to do normal trade as this give more possible money to pay out.

[Chuck Finley]

Ok there is the classic battle of the forms as to which jurisdiction apply

but in the case where both parties agree to a jurisdiction, then the matter is 99% of the time heard there, and most other countries court will accept this in a civil case.

If they get an order against mtgox that's just the beginning. Even if a court is quick to grant relief against mtgox that does not mean enforcing that order will be anywhere close to easy. They could get an order today saying mtgox owes them $75,000,000 - that doesn't mean they'll ever see a dime of the money.