Bitstamp founder loses bitter court battle with new owners
A bitter dispute between the founder of crypto exchange Bitstamp and the company’s new owners has reached its end.
Bitstamp founder Nejc Kodrič will be forced to sell his remaining shares in the company to new owners NXMH under a UK High Court ruling issued yesterday, the Block first reported. Judge Eason Rajah QC ruled in favour of defendant Bitstamp Holdings, an investment vehicle owned by NXMH, which snapped up Bitstamp in 2018.
Kodrič will be forced to exercise a call option to sell a 9.8 per cent stake in the company for just $13.46m, a price which the claimant and his legal team described as “very significantly lower” than their market value. Kodrič sought an injunction against the option in August 2021, claiming the call option was invalid.
NXMH initially kept Kodrič on at Bitstamp as its chief executive, but relations soon took a turn for the worst.
Kodrič was replaced two years later by former Gemini managing director Julian Sawyer and moved to a non-executive role with a seat on the company’s board. In the court ruling, which effectively terminates Kodrič’s role at the crypto exchange, the snubbed founder called Jong Hyun Hong, one of NXMH’s board representatives, “hostile and domineering.”
The court filings further revealed that in 2019, NXMH had unveiled plans to take Bitstamp public within three years through an IPO with a $1bn valuation.
“Bitstamp’s two major shareholders – NXMH and Nejc Kodrič – have a private shareholder matter which is being worked through, but does not directly involve Bitstamp,” Julian Sawyer, who has been chief executive of Bitstamp since 2020, told Morning Wire in an emailed statement.
Read more: Luxembourg grants Bitstamp the first European bitcoin exchange licence