Jerry Chan on CoinGeek Weekly Livestream: Coinbase, Kraken defending themselves in Craig Wright’s passing-off fake Bitcoin claim

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Jerry Chan, former Wall Street technologist at Goldman Sachs, shares his own analysis on the case filed by Dr. Craig Wright against Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) and Kraken. Wright is suing the said cryptocurrency exchanges for passing-off fake Bitcoin, regarding their use of the name Bitcoin in relation to assets, that do not conform to the system described in the white paper. The claim is said to be worth hundreds of billions of pounds.

Unlike the COPA case wherein Coinbase and Kraken are merely participants in the background attacking Wright, Wright’s claim puts the two companies right in the crosshairs for their actions. “They are going to have to defend themselves,” he says. Jerry is inclined to believe that the defendants will opt out of the case and instead, go for a settlement deal. For his part, Jerry says Coinbase and Kraken should only go to court if they believe they have at least a 70% chance of winning. Otherwise, a loss would pose huge consequences and damage not only to the company’s users and shareholders, but also its executive committee: “Brian would be fired immediately, there’s no way any of the executive committee could survive that.”

The lawsuit comes at the onset of Goldman Sachs announcement of its first ever lending facility backed by Bitcoin, an effort by Coinbase to bring money from Wall Street to the digital-asset space. Jerry, a former employee of Goldman Sachs thinks the leading global investment company is keen to introduce bitcoin as part of their financial services. As he explains, “Goldman Sachs facilitates risk liquidity where people want to buy speculative things that some people want to get rid of, mortgages are one of those and so I think them getting involved in this at arm’s length is not unexpected.” However, he also thinks there is some uncertainty coming from Goldman to add Bitcoin to their services as it is still in its early stages. For his part, the recent partnership could mean that the financial services company is using Coinbase as a shield.

On this episode of CoinGeek Weekly Livestream, Jerry also discussed a new project of his that is set to launch in private beta in a few weeks. Without disclosing details, Jerry hints at an egaming product that will include the blockchain aspects of NFTs. As for what to expect from the game, he says, “I will say that I am very much for a model which is different from the traditional NFT game model or blockchain game model.”

Jerry was keen to point out some of the collaborative projects he’s seen between BSV and other blockchains. He sees value in hybrid projects that use BSV as the tech solution and not the token solution. As he explains, “there is a value in bridging projects… it’s not something that a lot of BSV purists want to hear but the truth is, they have the market.”

His advice to members of the BSV community is to embrace open capitalism and competition. He notes there is more than one solution for every problem. He sends out this message to those building on BSV: “I think we need to be more collaborative as opposed to trying to compete with other blockchains. I think we have to trust the free market to choose… and that means also playing nice with other projects. I think that’s kind of important.” 

Check out the previous episodes of CoinGeek Weekly Livestream on YouTube.