The so-called “Bitcoin Jesus,” Roger Ver, has been summoned to repay over $20 million in damages to Genesis after failing to settle certain cryptocurrency options transactions before the payment deadline.
The investor has been given 20 days to answer the summons, after which he will be forced to pay reparations by default.
- As reported by Offshore Alert, the filing was submitted by a British Virgin Islands-domiciled affiliate of Genesis, which designated New York Country as the place of trial.
- The filing states that the options transactions in question expired on December 30. Failing to answer the summons will require Ver to repay at least $20,869,788, alongside Genesis’s costs, expenses, and attorney’s fees.
- This isn’t the first time Ver has gotten into legal trouble this crypto winter. In July, the Seychelles-based crypto exchange CoinFlex sued Ver for $84 million for failing to repay his margin debt.
- CoinFlex had made a special arrangement for Ver in which it agreed not to liquidate the collateral on his trade when it reached the regular limit, due to trust in him as a counterparty. The company filed for restructuring in August.
- Genesis, too, has filed for bankruptcy, after going down as the largest unsecured creditor in FTX’s bankruptcy.
- A Genesis lawyer recently told a Manhattan court that an agreement could be reached with creditors within a week. Filings show that the company still has $1.6 billion worth of assets more than liabilities.
- Ver is a longtime member of the crypto space, and a loud proponent of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) – a Bitcoin hard fork with an increased block size limit to facilitate faster transactions. His margin loan with CoinFlex was against BCH, which is down 53% over the last year.