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‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Roger Ver sues OKCoin for $570,000

A well-known name in the digital currency ecosystem, Roger Ver, has sued OKCoin, a cryptocurrency exchange, for nearly $570,000 over an alleged breach of contract, South China Morning Post reported.

Ver is the registrant and administrator of the domain name bitcoin.com. According to court documents, he entered into a contract with OKCoin in December, 2014, whereby the latter agreed to manage and operate bitcoin.com on his behalf through the domain name Okcoin.com.

Under the contract, OKCoin was required to redesign the bitcoin.com website, perform search engine optimisation and acquire advertisers. Also, both parties were required to cooperate for a minimum of 5 years and split revenues.

In a writ filed to Hong Kong’s High Court this week, Ver has now claimed that the company had broken their contractual obligations and refused to pay the monthly sums just three months into the contract. Ver is now seeking $10,000 for each of remaining 57 months of the agreed five-year contract, which totals to $570,000.

In addition, he has also claimed that the company has forged the contested version of the contract, saying that it included a clause allowing OKCoin to cancel the contract with six months’ notice. Ver said that this clause was not there in the original, and his digital signature had been wrongfully copied and pasted into the document. He has requested the court to declare the contested version of the contract a forgery.

“The short version is that they forged my signature onto a fake contract and the digital signatures prove it beyond any doubt," Ver said in an emailed statement to CoinDesk.

Changpeng Zhao, former OKCoin CTO, came out in support of Roger Ver last year. In a Reddit post, Zhao said that he did not expect OKCoin will delay or default on payments of $10k in size.

Founder and CEO of OKCoin Xu Mingxing was named as a co-defendant in the lawsuit. In May 2015, OKCoin announced that it will no longer be managing the domain Bitcoin.com due to a “contractual conflict” with its owner Roger Ver.

Roger Ver is a well-known name in the cryptocurrency ecosystem and often referred to as “Bitcoin Jesus”. He is CEO of MemoryDealers.com, one of the first businesses in the world to accept Bitcoin, and also owns and operates Bitcoin.com. Ver also serves as the Chairman of the Cryptocurrency Advisory Council of the soon-to-be John McAfee Global Technologies, Inc. Last month, he joined Private Internet Access Board of Advisors.

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