Investing in cryptocurrency has become such a lucrative business that there is so much competition within the crypto community, with different stakeholders and startups functioning as the competitors. As is the case of the business world, some competitions are healthy, while some have translated into lawsuit-backed rivalry. The whole rivalry drama adds some color to the world of crypto, and thus makes the community an interesting one.
Bitmain News
At the moment, there is a legal battle between Bitmain, and three of its former employees that left the cryptocurrency mining giant and launched their mining pool.
BTC.com is one of the biggest bitcoin mining pools in the world according to hash rate, and is owned by Bitmain. The firm has gone to court to sue the co-founders of another mining pool Poolin. The lawsuit is based on the claims by crypto mining giant that the co-founders of Poolin who were former staffers at Bitmain, violated a non-compete agreement. The company is seeking $4.3 million as damages for the violation.
However, according to the three co-founders, they have come out to say the non-compete agreement was rendered invalid the moment Bitmain failed to honor the stated time to pay their compensation as it was contained in an agreement.
This occurrence has given some rare insight into Bitmain’s employment practices, and as one of the major players in the blockchain industry, the spotlight is on them for different reasons. The crypto mining giant makes a lot of money from the sale of its mining equipment, and it has a mining pool, which was responsible for about $43 million of the company’s revenues in 2018, and $2.7 billion in revenue from the sale of its mining equipment in the same year.
The co-founders of Poolin, Zhibiao Pan (CEO), Fa Zhu (COO), Tainzhao Li (CTO), have six lawsuits against Bitmain, as the three co-founders each sued Bitmain as a preemptive measure, to release them from the non-complete contract. In a bid to defend themselves, Bitmain countered the lawsuit by suing each of the co-founders, and they also claimed that because the three of them went against the non-commit agreement, they had caused some serious losses to the company, because the former staffers had started a mining pool and was directly competing against Bitmain. Apart from the fact that Bitmain is seeking damages, they have also requested that the court should order the executives at Poolin to adhere to the non-compete contract.
It is quite a case, as lawyers representing the different parties involved in the case are doing all they can to ensure their clients are in the clear and compensated appropriately. At the moment, there are no indications that the court has judged the case, or when the case will get judged. However, after the hearing, the judge asked if it was possible for both parties to reach an agreement and settle, but Bitmain’s lawyers declined. Bitmain has been in the news for suing a senior executive, when the company sued Zuoxing Yang, but they lost the case.
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