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Comment by zhoujianfu | Hacker News Reader

FYI, this “Bitcoin Insider” (there should be no such thing in a decentralized currency?) apparently took $5M from mtgox, claiming he could get them through regulation in the U.S. (he did no such thing)... then sued them for $16B after they went bankrupt, holding the thousands of creditors hostage for years... so far.

And apparently now fortress will give him (CoinLab) $11M to move (slightly) out of the way.

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Yeah, Vessenes is so far inside that he has a massive conflict of interest in this case. He's also acted in pretty bad faith. Here's the story from a knowledgeable outsider: https://blog.wizsec.jp/2019/04/coinlab-v-mtgox-imaginarium-o...

Even putting aside the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, the original contract with CoinLab looks pretty bad: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.192566... They agreed on damages of $50M if either side breached the contract but neither party ever had nearly that much money and the deal was only worth less than $1M per year. IANAL but this seems like a dumb suicide pact.

> IANAL but this seems like a dumb suicide pact.

IANAL either, but those sound like punitive damages, which are unenforceable. The court could accept the assessment in the contract, but if it's blatantly unreasonable, they are supposed to pick a value that more accurately matches the damage incurred due to the breach.

Not that I would want to be in a situation where you have to depend on that...

They’re called liquidated damages and they’re typically only enforceable when they are reasonably close to the actual monetary harm that would be caused by a breach of a contract.

We know today the the FBI sought to destroy bitcoin as a policy objective. The double posting was used inside the trusted network. To undermine the core function, in the end FBI agents went to jail for their own criminal actions - MT Gox was useful for media purposes

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