CoinFLEX Begins Legal Action To Recover $84M From 'Bitcoin Jesus'

Cryptocurrency exchange CoinFLEX said it has commenced arbitration in Hong Kong to recover $84 million from a single customer.

What Happened: In a blog post on Saturday, the platform's founders Sudhu Arumugam and Mark Lamb said they were optimistic that they would recover the customer’s $84 million debt within 12 months.

Last month, Lamb revealed that the customer in question was Roger Ver, a high-profile investor known in the community as “Bitcoin BTC/USD Jesus.” 

At the time, CoinFLEX said that the debt associated with Ver’s account was $47 million worth of USDC. The exchange has now revised that figure to $84 million.

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“The first estimate of [$47 million] which we communicated did not include the significant loss in liquidating his significant FLEX coin positions. Now that we have found a bid for that size, the liquidations have created a final deficit of [$84 million] for the account,” said the CoinFLEX founders.

Arumugam and Lamb believe that Ver has a legal obligation to pay the total amount of his personal liability. Ver has denied allegations of owing money to CoinFLEX — instead, he says CoinFLEX owes him "a substantial sum of money."

The exchange said it plans to make 10% of balances available for withdrawal in the days to come. In order to do so, the platform would have to sell all non-native assets locked into USDC.

Price Action: CoinFLEX’s native token FLEX FLEX/USD dropped 66% after the exchange halted withdrawals. At press time, the token was trading at $0.28. BTC was trading at $20,617, down 3.93% over the last 24 hours.