Jack Dorsey, the Former Twitter boss, announced a fund to support BTC developers. Support includes paying legal bills, developing trial strategies, and finding and retaining a lawyer.
In response to the recent legal battles faced by Bitcoin developers, former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey announced a fund to support them so that they can face legal challenges with confidence. The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is managed with Chaincode Labs co-founder Alex Morcos. It will also be managed by Martin White, professor of computer science at the University of Sussex.
Jack Dorsey: Litigation is having the intended effect
“The Bitcoin community is currently the subject of multi-front litigation. Litigation and continued threats are having their intended effect; individual defendants have chosen to capitulate in the absence of legal support. Open-source developers, who are often independent, are especially susceptible to legal pressure. In response, we propose a coordinated and formalized response to help defend developers. The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is a nonprofit entity that aims to minimize legal headaches that discourage software developers from actively developing Bitcoin and related projects such as the Lightning Network, Bitcoin privacy protocols, and the like.
The main purpose of this Fund is to defend developers from lawsuits regarding their activities in the Bitcoin ecosystem, including finding and retaining defense counsel, developing litigation strategy, and paying legal bills. This is a free and voluntary option for developers to take advantage of if they so wish. The Fund will start with a corps of volunteer and part-time lawyers. The board of the Fund will be responsible for determining which lawsuits and defendants it will help defend.
“The Fund’s first activities will be to take over coordination of the existing defense of the Tulip Trading lawsuit against certain developers alleging breach of fiduciary duty and provide the source of funding for outside counsel. At this time, the Fund is not seeking to raise additional money for its operations but will do so at the direction of the board if needed for further legal action or to pay for staff.”
Legal challenges have stymied progress
Software developers have been put off developing bitcoin recently. This is thanks to legal challenges. Work developing protocols such as Bitcoin and the Lightning network have flagged. The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund was thus created as a non-profit entity to alleviate some of these challenges. For now, Bitcoin developers will be assisted by volunteer lawyers and part-time lawyers. According to the email, the fund will not automatically handle all the legal battles faced by developers.
Tulip Trading will be the first
According to the news, the fund management will identify the lawsuits and defendants it will support. Also, the raising of additional funds for this operation will be under the leadership of the board of directors.
Recently, Ontier LLP, the law firm of Craig Wright’s Tulip Trading Limited (TTL), received the green light to sue 16 bitcoin-related developers for funds from the defunct Mt.Gox exchange. According to the report, Wright claims to have billions of dollars stolen. He expects developers to help him recover the funds.
Wright’s lawyers wrote, “The fact that someone stole Tulip Trading’s digitally stored, encrypted private bitcoin keys does not stop developers from implementing the code that will allow the rightful owner to regain control of their Bitcoins.”
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