Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is accused of sabotaging a startup to benefit his own project.

MouseBelt is suing Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, for harming Knowledger in order to establish his own project: ResearchHub.

Patrick Joyce created Knowledgr with technical and financial assistance from MouseBelt. The accelerator began communicating with Joyce in 2018, but the two signed all of the necessary paperwork to begin working together in May 2019. In the beginning, relationships were going well. Joyce was reaching the objectives, and MouseBelt was fulfilling its contractual commitments.

However, the complaint alleges that everything changed when Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong arrived.

According to the complaint, Armstrong was covertly working on a similar project: ResearchHub, and given how far ahead Knowledgr’s development was, Mousbelt argues that the Coinbase CEO took the easy way out by taking over Knowledgr’s resources to advance his project forward, saving time and I+D costs:

Though Knowledgr was at an advanced level and Armstrong’s project was simply a concept taking shape, one thing is certain: now, ResearchHub is online and Knowledgr is not, and Armstrong has a big responsibility for this, according to MouseBelt’s complaint.

When Armstrong released his essay “Ideas on how to improve scientific research,” he invited anybody who wanted to share ideas to contact him, and Patrick Joyce was one of those who did.

After a series of emails and pressure from Armstrong, Joyce began to reveal more and more information on Knowledgr, to the point where he was working on both projects concurrently.

Eventually, Joyce began devoting more time to Armstrong’s project than to his own, resulting in a form of sabotage of his own endeavor, according to the complaint filed by MouseBelt.

So far, all parties involved remain silent.

Patrick

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