I think this should become the new MtGox slogan. Nothing else quite sums up the new MtGox age we’ve landed in. In truth we’ve been heading there for some time, but now it’s official and unashamed. An age of paid influencers, snake oil in shiny containers, and finding ways to morally justify trampling on other creditors’ heads.

This article is about the recent contract offered by Russian law firm Zheleznikov and Partners (ZP) for getting a share in a possible Russian MtGox bitcoin stash. If you haven’t done so already, read lawyer Daniel Kelman’s article on it from last month.

Here’s my take on the situation. Please note I don’t have a Russian lawyer and these are my private thoughts. They are not verified against Russian law.

A Russian legal firm claims to have identified an unspecified number of alleged criminals in Russia who may have direct or indirect access to bitcoin wallets which may or may not be holding some of the missing MtGox bitcoins.

They believe that by initiating a new criminal case it may be possible to convince the alleged criminal(s) to pay some of their stash (if they have it) back to MtGox creditors in exchange for leniency by the Russian courts.

Proposal

The firm’s proposal is to take the total recovered figure for each creditor, deduct an eye-popping 75% commission (for those with under 1000 bitcoins), PLUS their legal fees at $320/hour, and if there’s anything left give that to the creditor. Their legal fees will be unknown until the end of all this but for many people are likely to take up most or all of their share of the recovered money.

Bitcoins recovered would normally be shared amongst all of the MtGox victims. However, if you’re not registered with the Russian authorities as a victim at the time of the payout you may not be eligible for a share.

In effect, they propose to take what would be all the creditors’ share of any recovered bitcoins (if they had registered) and hand it to the small private number of creditors who signed up early with them to keep the money for themselves. (Up to the value of their total MtGox claim, minus the 75% which goes to the lawyers, minus the fees). Their hope is that creditors will have dollar (or Ruble) signs appearing in their eyes when they hear this story and sign over their rights to any recoveries before their imminent application deadline on 22nd September. That’s only 9 days after the proposal and application was made public!

One of the critical flaws in their business model for anyone who wants a share of this money, is that this legal firm are not going to be the only people interested in these bitcoins if they exist. The firm won’t have a monopoly on claims just because they prompted a criminal case to be opened.
The US Department of Justice is likely to be interested, as is the MtGox trustee, as well as the other MtGox creditors.
In the theoretical case that only ZP were involved, and in the case that money did become available, then getting a share of all the money, even after 75% plus all the legal fees and expenses, could leave those claimants with some kind of payout. That’s the carrot being dangled. Not a very tasty one really.

The problem is that if you stop to consider all the issues rationally, it seems that in the event of any significant recovery it would be very likely that those who sign up early with ZP would end up much, much worse off than if they had waited and taken a different path, and likely even if they had waited and did nothing.

ZP are probably banking on people seeing this deadline as a last chance to get in on this and panic-rushing to sign up, however this is only an arbitrary deadline imposed by this specific legal firm. Any generic deadline for claims seems likely to be years off in the future because this is likely to drag out for a very long time. It will probably be at least several months before a new criminal case can even start, and going by information in ZP’s own document any other law firm or claimant can put in a claim at any point even during the case and that’s likely to go on for years.

The deadline is also suspicious because it is shortly before the next creditors’ meeting and before the new CR plan will be unveiled. The creditors’ meeting is the point at which we will have the first chance to ask the trustee about all of this, about how he plans to treat the CR claims of those who sign up to ZP and whether he will reduce or delay them. It also could be covered in the CR plan.

It’s not likely that they created this deadline with the genuine aim to stick to it. After the high-pressure period has landed its catch of flustered creditors, I think we can expect an announcement that they want to allow people more time to apply. They even might make their conditions and fees less draconian. Refusing more customers wouldn’t be in their commercial interests.

In reality there will almost certainly be many other claimants if there is any significant money recovered. If the MtGox trustee gets hold of it, and he will be doing everything he can to achieve this, then we will all share in the recovered money automatically.

And it seems almost inevitable that there will be other lawyers offering the service for far lower fees. A creditor-originated effort would be almost certain to happen in the event of there being significant bitcoins to share and if the MtGox trustee is not involved.

There may even end up being a class action suit covering everyone automatically.

In these cases it seems likely that those signing up now will lose out significantly compared to what they could receive by waiting and taking other paths. It’s not clear that there might be any advantage to signing up early.

MtGox Trustee

The MtGox trustee will receive data about anyone signing up for this. His position on this is unsurprisingly that all assets from MtGox should be shared by all creditors. As I mentioned earlier he will try to get hold of the money for the creditors to share. But he actually has a much easier option should that not work out. He can simply reduce the CR payouts for those receiving payouts from Russia to compensate for their gains.
However as the vast majority of any Russia payout is actually paid over to ZP (for anyone under 1000 bitcoins it would be 75%-100%), this presents a significant risk of a massive net loss for anyone signing up. The salesman of the ZP contract Andy Pag suggests he believes the trustee would choose to go easy on the creditor by offsetting the amount paid to ZP and only deducting the rest of the gains. However that would mean ZP’s fees would be effectively covered by all the creditors and it’s unlikely that could be allowed to happen. The trustee is legally bound to act in creditors’ interests and choosing to pay ZP’s fees unnecessarily would not be compatible with that. The loss would almost certainly stay with the creditor who signed the ZP contract.

The other big problem is that in order to ensure the Russia claimants are not paid out more than the correct amount, it seems a reasonable possibility that the MtGox trustee might hold back the CR payouts of those registered in the Russian case until that claim is resolved. If so, it could add an extra delay of years to their payouts.

There is an even worse possibility, and that is this could end up delaying the whole of the CR for all of us. It certainly could make any CR plan more complicated and if that’s the case it could delay the release of the imminently upcoming plan for another few months.

Legal fees

The contract has some quite worrisome provisions for legal fees, and for locking the person into the contract.
The amount of legal fees each user will be exposed to is limitless and it’s very unclear what kinds of things will be expected to be paid for. It will cost $320 USD per hour for any kind of work, which presumably also includes processing the application form, queries and possibly complaints about their service. Their example suggests the total could be 10-100 hours, but doesn’t make any upper limit. The creditor would presumably have no control over this. There would be nothing to stop the firm charging fees for reasons which have arguable merit and there would be no realistic way to escape from the situation if they did, due to the termination terms.

There are so many ways one can lose out by signing up to this scheme but I can see only one possible situation in which it might make more money for someone than waiting. This is a situation in the signup document which Andy Pag mentions as a sweetener. If ZP manage to somehow find a way to use legal sleight-of-hand to block other lawyers, creditors, the MtGox trustee and the Department of Justice from getting their fair share of any bitcoins then it’s possible they could somehow take all of the payout for their clients. But it’s hard to imagine this could possibly happen, and remember the trustee will probably then reduce your CR payout and you’d likely still be far worse off after you’ve paid all of ZP’s fees.

In this case it would effectively be a business model based around taking other peoples’ share of the MtGox bitcoins using legal trickery. Ethically this is about as low as it gets and it’s sad to see it being pushed as a business strategy. If this situation ever did happen you can bet the other creditors would be up in arms and doing everything they could to dox and sue any benefactors. I honestly can’t see anyone coming out of this happy other than those selling it. I’m not sure whether I should feel bad for anyone who has already signed up or feel angry at them. Certainly Andy Pag should know better than to be using his position of influence and (former) trust to be selling this stuff and offering “opinions” which seem crafted to build an unrealistic perspective.  I can see possible lawsuits waiting for him further down the line and I’m not sure his responsibility-waiver document will protect him as much as he thinks.

Not everyone seems to be aware of this. If you have not put in your CR claim, please head to mtgox.com and put it in before the October 22nd deadline. Even if you had a bankruptcy claim, you must make a CR claim. And if you missed the original bankruptcy claim, you can still make a claim!

Trailer for new MtGox film Bitcoin Big Bang, released by Canal Plus. Broadcast in France on 28th February, it will be released in other territories at some point.

Back in November, anonymous creditors behind mtgox-creditors.com filed a request to end the bankruptcy and move Mtgox into Civil Rehabilitation.

Civil Rehabilitation is generally used as a means of restructuring a failing company while protecting it from lawsuits. In the case of MtGox, it’s not likely to be used to actually restructure the company but rather as a more flexible form of bankruptcy. This is a standard and tested use of Civil Rehabilitation, though less common than the restructuring scenario.

Instead of following a rigid set of steps as in bankruptcy, the trustee would be free to create his own plan. And most importantly, the bitcoin claims will be able to be revalued – hopefully in bitcoin this time. The creditors will get to vote on this plan.
The most obvious distribution would be that the fiat creditors would be paid back 100% of their claim because by law they couldn’t be paid less than they would under bankruptcy. Then we would expect the bitcoin creditors to share what remains of the bitcoins. However, the rules of CR could be interpreted in such a way that the court could potentially have issues with doing it this way so we’ll have to see what happens. Perhaps Kraken will end up distributing the bitcoins after all.

 

Likelihood of going ahead

A court examiner tasked with giving an opinion about 3 of the entry conditions reports his conclusion to the court on 28th February, and shortly after the court will make a decision whether we can progress down the path of Civil Rehabilitation.

It looks extremely likely that the examiner will give this his green light, despite that there have been claims to the contrary for the purposes of raising funds from creditors.
In order to argue against it, the examiner would have to make the case that either the bankruptcy is more suitable from the perspective of creditors in general, or it is obvious that a CR plan would not be approved by creditors or the court, or the petition for CR is filed for unjust purposes. The examiner would simply not have sufficient grounds to support these arguments. However if he did try to, and the court subsequently denied the request, there would be plenty of opportunity and ammunition to appeal.

Moving into Civil Rehabilitation would be a great benefit for almost everyone. We as creditors should get our bitcoins returned. The Japanese government can diffuse the internationally embarassing situation which is mounting over the MtGox bankruptcy. The Japanese legal system can escape from the nightmare of MtGox with its dignity bruised but still relatively intact. Mark Karpeles can avoid the poisoned money. Win-win-win-win.

It would technically not be in the financial interests of the shareholders, which could drag in the Tibanne trustee, but the court would not take the shareholders’ interests into consideration when making the decision.

 

Revaluation Of Claims

We would have to go through another claims process. In a practical sense, there would be no need to re-file claims because the data is already collated, including the bitcoin value. However legally if the claims are carried over from bankruptcy then the same yen amount has to be used. Therefore we would probably have to refile all the claims. The trustee may be able to use the existing claims data to expedite the process however.
The good news is for those who didn’t get a claim in the first time round there would by law be a reopening of the claims process for those people.

 

Coinlab’s claim – good news

The rules for Coinlab’s claim would be largely the same under Civil Rehabilitation as under the Bankruptcy Act.
However, there would a big difference in the situation. There’s no reason why the creditors cannot be paid back while such a (relatively) small claim is pending, therefore our money would no longer be held to ransom. The bitcoins are worth approximately $2.1 billion, Coinlab’s claim is roughly 3.5% of that. It would be fair to expect the trustee to distribute almost all of the money while Coinlab’s case is still pending. So effectively, Coinlab would be likely to become a very small issue.
If Coinlab’s claim is no longer holding up the main distribution, it will lose its teeth and it wouldn’t be a big issue to just let it work its way through the legal system until it eventually gets excreted out. Goodbye Peter.
Alternatively, Coinlab might realise that their leverage is disappearing and accept a lowball offer by the trustee.

 

Creditors meeting, March 7th

It seems probable that the court’s decision will still be pending when the creditors’ meeting happens, and given the likely switch to CR, I expect this will be one of the less interesting or important meetings. Hopefully it will be the last one though.

 

Timeframe

Civil Rehabilitation runs pretty quickly. According to statistics published by Tokyo District Court, a Civil Rehabilitation plan is generally confirmed by the court within 5-6 months of filing the petition, and by then the claims are normally finalised. At that point there’s no reason why we couldn’t move towards the main distribution whilst leaving some money for pending claims like Coinlab. So we could well have most of our money by later this year.

Most of the work required to launch has now been done and we have a fairly solid plan of the legal process. We still have work to do in unifying our approach.

So far the committee members are: Kolin Burges, Daniel Kelman, Josh Jones, plus an unconfirmed other. These are the founding members who are getting this thing off the ground, and any participation as voting members will be discussed during the consultation period. Kim Nilsson will be an advisor. We will appoint more committee members during the consultation period, this will be done with creditor participation and based around the aim of diversity of representation.

Edit – due to recent additions to the team, the details below are now back under review and not yet agreed with all current members.

Purpose

The primary aims are to represent the interests of all creditors, and to push for a speedy and fair distribution. There are a number of novel ideas on the table for dealing with the bankruptcy problems but the court is unlikely to approve of novel proposals unless they can be shown to be backed by a very large number of people. The committee will be able to submit such proposals with a much larger degree of authority than individuals could.

Diversity

Diversity is absolutely critical. The committee will be representing the interests of ALL types of creditors. We need support from the majority of creditors in order to be formally recognised by the court as a creditors’ committee. We will be taking feedback on our diversity and using that to help select more members.

Independence

The committee will be an independent structure, not directly connected with mtgoxprotest.com or any other entity. Our independence is very important as we must demonstrate that we will be representing creditors fairly. We will put a structure in place to help ensure this and to allow creditors to feedback with any concerns.

Constitution

The committee is producing a constitution, which is a binding representation of our position and the values by which we intend to act. It’s used as a check to bind us to the same set of expectations that creditors signed up for. We will present an initial draft constitution at stage 1 and it will be updated and fine-tuned using creditor feedback until stage 2 begins, at which point it will be set in stone.

Funding and costs

The committee’s ethos is that it will always be completely free to be represented by the committee. The starting legal expenses were covered by the founding members. At some point we may request voluntary donations to help cover expenses, however we don’t expect a high level of expenses.

Roadmap

STAGE 1 (Approximately 2 weeks from now)

Official kick-off! Open website and begin signups. The draft constitution will be available on the site, along with committee member profiles.

Consultation period (Pencilled in to be approximately 4-5 weeks in length, but in reality this will last as long as it lasts)

• Creditor feedback on the constitution
• Creditor feedback on any concerns about diversity of representation
• General questions and feedback

STAGE 2  Begin verification process

STAGE 3  Process verified signups and present to court

 

 

I am constantly being asked about what I think of the MtGox Legal group. I have been sharing information with the group and I explained my position in a post on their forum a while back. As much as I’d like to be part of it in some way, I can only give limited support to something like this because it potentially puts the needs of the few above the needs of the many. MtGoxProtest.com has always been about the creditors as a whole (although it’s probably weighted slightly towards bitcoin creditors).

I think we should be investigating as many legal avenues as possible, and it’ll be very interesting to hear what their lawyer comes up with because it may be something which helps us all. But my issue is that the group has said it will be taking the path of most benefit to the paying members, and right now the greatest danger in the bankruptcy is if we move in separate directions. So I worry about what is going to happen if the group’s lawyer’s recommendation is something which doesn’t benefit everyone. His incentivisation is towards helping the group specifically and that in itself could be dangerous because it might be an easier task.

I mentioned in my last post that the most important thing now is that we all work together. The best way to serve our own interests is to work towards everyone’s interests. If we slide (maybe unconsciously) into a “me first” culture we will end up fractured and could destroy any chance we have of solving the main issue(s). Information or idea sharing could become strained because those who have important information/ideas may not want to share it when others might ultimately end up using it against them. I feel this bankruptcy situation is like the Prisoners’ Dilemma in game theory, where different factions might be inclined to do their own thing to maximise their interests but in fact they may only be moving themselves away from the best possible solution.

That brings me to what I’ve been doing since 2 or 3 weeks ago. Following on from my last post, I believe the best possible way forward is to build a universal creditor committee which represents the interests of every creditor, including bitcoin and fiat creditors. I’ve been working towards this goal almost full-time, and there are other well-known names now involved in it.

If we can manage to get a committee formalised and approved, we will wield a significant degree of influence over the bankruptcy. The main thing which is hobbling the creditors right now is that any proposal to the court, or to the trustee, which deals with the bitcoin surplus is likely to be thrown out. That’s partly because there will likely be a set of creditors (or shareholders) who will be disadvantaged by it. If the proposal is part of a wider effort which considers all creditor interests, and there’s committee backing to prove it, it would become difficult to throw out on the basis that it goes against the interests of other creditors. Bankruptcy law is vague enough that novel approaches can be tried without going against the letter of the law, and if we can remove the main barrier which is stopping us from doing this then we give ourselves a reasonable chance.

This is something which has never been done before in Japan, and we have our work cut out for us because getting support from the required creditor majority (around 12,500 people) will be quite a logistical problem. And the court representative has told us that it will be difficult to fulfil the legal requirements because they will only allow a committee which can demonstrate it is truly working on behalf of everyone.
However I believe it’s possible to accomodate the interests of all creditors when there is so much “surplus” money at stake. We are still working thorough the details of how this could be done.
The entry barrier to supporting the committee is being kept down by having no joining fee and by making it as easy as possible to sign up. Built into the committee will be a constitution which guarantees it operates in the manner expected, and of course anyone can opt out of supporting it at any point. Joining a legal action group will not affect your ability to support a creditors’ committee, so you don’t need to worry about making a choice between the two.

More on this soon.

The big bombshell from the creditors’ meeting is that it was officially announced that the creditors’ 200,000 bitcoins are going to be sold off and a maximum of approx $473 per bitcoin will be paid back to the creditors. The rest will go to the owners of MtGox, effectively Mark Karpeles and Jed McCaleb.
This is something we all knew was an issue but to hear a direct acknowledgement that that’s the official course of action was a surprise. It means most of the value of our bitcoins will probably be lost, and the Japanese authorities are not going to try to do anything to stop it. This is a full-scale bankruptcy disaster.

Mark Karpeles has claimed he doesn’t want the money due to the lawsuits which would inevitably target him, but when asked to make a statement on Reddit saying he would give the creditors the money back, he did not respond.
This is an important point. He cannot continue to cultivate his new “nice guy” image and claim he doesn’t want the creditors’ money, while at the same time avoiding stating that he will give the money back. It’s one or the other and he now has to make a choice.

 

Why is the trustee doing this?

For the trustee, this is the safest option. This whole situation is very complicated, and if he was to take another course of action it would be difficult to find and manage a solution which pleased everyone. If he tried anything unorthodox, he’d be likely to attract complaints from somewhere.
Decisions made in the Japanese legal system tend to err towards equality rather than efficiency, so it might be considered better to give everyone a bad solution than to give most people a good solution but have some others complaining about it.

For example, if he was to attempt to re-evaluate the bitcoins at their current value it may draw complaints from the trustee of Tibanne’s bankruptcy. Tibanne’s trustee is obviously going to try to suck as much money out of MtGox as he can, and the nature of his job means he may not be allowed to take morals into consideration. So if a motion is filed which would pass the value of the bitcoins to the MtGox creditors rather than to Tibanne he’d be likely to complain about that and there’s a good chance the court would take the “safe” decision and refuse the bitcoin evaluation change.

What is very noteworthy is that in this creditors’ meeting the trustee kept stressing “this is the law” and similar things. Basically saying he’s sticking as close to the vanilla bankruptcy route as possible and not acknowledging that there may be other possibilities. He has made decisions before which stray from the vanilla path, such as not selling off the bitcoins at the start of the bankruptcy. But it looks like he’s clamping down now.

 

Can something be done to fix this?

Absolutely, yes it can. This is now down to the creditors to fix, so it’s time to get busy!

The two main angles are legal and political.

From a legal point of view, this problem may or may not be solvable. Creditors need to try as many ways as possible and we need to coordinate efforts as much as possible.
From a political point of view, this is most definitely solvable. The laws which have caused this disaster were written when the world was different, and they can be updated. In my next post “The Next MtGox is Now just Around the Corner”, I will argue why it’s only a matter of time before the laws do get updated. How fast it happens is down to political will, and that in turn is down to us creditors.

 

What do we do now?

D O N T    P A N I C

The next step is clear. We have to create the biggest creditor group possible. Let’s make the biggest group in Japanese history. This will give us strong leverage both inside and outside the bankruptcy. I’ve already been working on this. Expect to see more details and an announcement soon.

Just throwing a few things out there:
We also need to start creating structures of organisation instead of everyone running around panicing and doing their own thing in isolation. So as well as a creditor group, we need people cooperating on legal solutions.
The media will be indispensable to us and they love a good bankruptcy. This requires careful planning.
This is now my day job and I’m going to be following this up with regular updates. I’ll try to be more active on Reddit too.

This was an extremely short meeting. I didn’t check the exact time but it was probably about 40 minutes in total.
The Dutch ambassador was supposed to be present in the meeting to represent the Dutch creditors, but despite a lot of paperwork being prepared in advance he wasn’t allowed into the meeting!
The meeting was ended after around 7 questions. My interpreter didn’t get a chance to ask my questions, though half had been asked by other people.
One thing my interpreter said was, he felt that throughout the session they were trying to avoid answering the questions and just passing off the minimum they could get away with. This is the same as I noticed in the other creditor meetings.

I was pretty annoyed when they ended it. The meeting is only twice a year and it’s the ONLY time when creditors can get updated about one of the biggest bankruptcies in history. We are paying for these people to be there at the meeting updating us, and we are paying for the whole shebang. Their responsibility is to listen to our questions at the meeting, and not to answer them poorly and then slip off after 20 minutes.
Someone actually brought something similar up in the meeting, that the transparency and frequency of updates was terrible. But as far as my interpreter can tell they didn’t answer that.

List of questions and answers
Due to translation difficulties and lack of time I’m not going to go into full details but just paraphrasing the main points of them.

1) What will happen to the surplus over $483 per bitcoin generated from the sale of our bitcoins?
A) The money over $483 will go to the MtGox shareholders

That was the big one! The hydrogen bomb of the bankruptcy. Everyone now was in shock, or at least I was. I didn’t actually expect them to answer this question. This means that in all probability most of our bitcoins will be lost to the company shareholders, and it means that the trustee is not doing anything to stop this happening. I hope this becomes the pivotal moment when everyone has had enough shit. For me it certainly is. More on this soon.

2) What happens if any bitcoins are retrieved from BTC-e?
A) They will go into the asset list and the money will go to the shareholders [not the creditors].

3) Can you be more transparent? Updates twice a year is not enough. And how are you holding the bitcoins? Are they insured?
A) We can’t say how the bitcoins are stored, and we don’t know of any way of insuring them. [AFAIK there was no reply about the transparency]

4) The bitcoin price is unstable and selling them could cause it to drop. Are you selling all 200k? Who will help to sell them?
A) We are selling ALL the 200k. How we sell them is not yet finalised.

This is at odds with the handout sheet, which says they don’t know yet whether they’ll be selling them or distributing them directly.

5) This wasn’t a question, but rather a Japanese creditor making a long statement. He said he believed we should get our bitcoins back because they are a tangible asset such as other financial assets, and therefore should be defined as property – and property is returnable outside of a bankruptcy. He said he was forming a union.
A) The trustee said the bitcoins were NOT returnable, and that forming a union was his choice and he couldn’t comment on it.

“This will be the last question.”

6) Is there any new information about Coinlab?
A) We are working on the Coinlab case and we don’t have anything to share. 

“This will be the last question.”

7) Do you have the Bitcoin Cash from the bitcoins?
A) Yes, we haven’t decided yet whether we’ll sell it or add them to the assets list. We are going to end the meeting now.

 

 

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Our legal fees are substantial, yet only a drop in the ocean compared to the money that’s at stake in the bankruptcy.

For the month of July 2017 they were around $16,000 USD and we’ve yet to receive August’s bill. I am covering the cost of these myself and I would like to request BTC donations towards them.

For details on the current aims of the legal help please see the post entitled “Update on bankruptcy situation.” As more things are added we’ll provide an updated list. The amount of funds raised will determine how much legal help we can get. There are many avenues to explore. None of the money will be going to myself.

The fund will be kept transparent. All receipts for money paid from the fund will be available on request.

Kolin Burges

The bankruptcy cannot end until the Coinlab lawsuit is ended in some way. The feeling amongst many creditors is that Coinlab is gaming the system with a meritless claim for $75m and effectively holding up the bankruptcy in order to scoop up an exorbitant payoff from our funds.

Unfortunately, if their claim is accepted it would most probably have the same priority as those of the depositor creditors. This of course goes against conventional wisdom. If someone steals something from you and is caught by the authorities with it, you would expect the authorities to hand it back to you and not sell it to fund the personal debts or lawsuits of the thief.

In addition to the Right of Segregation mentioned in the previous article, bankruptcies have the concept of priority of claims to deal with this kind of situation. Some claims can be given “preferred” status and some “subordinate”. However, under Japanese law only certain types of claim can be preferred – such as wages, taxes, pensions, etc. Bitcoin deposits would not be included. Similarly, it’s unlikely the Coinlab lawsuit would be given subordinate status.

The trustee has been trying to dismiss the claim on the grounds that what Coinlab claims to be an agreement with MtGox is invalid. But it’s up to the district court and not up to the trustee. Coinlab is obviously fighting to avoid this. It could easily take a couple of years for a final ruling. That leaves everything in a long, slow stalemate for now. The trustee has the option of offering a settlement to end the claim and we don’t know yet whether this is his plan. This is most likely what Coinlab is aiming for.