CoinFLEX CEO Offers ‘Olive Branch’ to Roger Ver Over $84M Debt

Mark Lamb, co-founder of CoinFLEX, posted an open letter to “Bitcoin Jesus” Roger Ver and Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith. 

The letter extends an “olive branch” to Ver and Smith to celebrate Lamb’s launch of Open Exchange, which is a claims exchange rebranded from CoinFLEX and co-founded by Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, formerly of the bankrupt Three Arrows Capital. 

Zhu, in a tweet thread from February, claimed that he and Davies wanted to use the “pain” and “lessons” from the collapse of Three Arrows, which led them to Open Exchange.

Lamb and Ver have been locked in a feud since Lamb initially accused Ver of owing CoinFLEX $47 million in USDC, a stablecoin, in June 2022. Ver pushed back against the claims, alleging that CoinFLEX owed him “a substantial sum of money.” 

In July of last year, CoinFLEX claimed that the sum owed to them by a single investor, identified by Lamb as Ver, totaled $84 million. 

Lamb claimed that a “large individual customer” had a manual margin arrangement with CoinFLEX, which allowed for a grace period to offer more collateral instead of an automatic liquidation, which is what happened for the average user. 

“The customer’s privilege came with a requirement that the customer personally indemnifies us for shortfalls in his account following the liquidation of his positions,” Lamb and co-founder Sudhu Arumugam wrote in a blog post last July. 

Following the $84 million in losses, CoinFLEX filed for a restructuring in a Seychelles court last August, which was approved. From there, Lamb, Zhu and Davies joined forces to create OPNX from the bones of CoinFLEX. 

The olive branch proposed by Lamb does not wipe the debts, however, as Lamb asked for a “payment plan.” He added “these ordinary people deserve a resolution.” OPNX is tokenizing rvUSD to allow them to achieve liquidity. The firm also offers markets for FTX claims.

As for Smith, Lamb is asking for Blockchain.com’s Cayman entity to return the three million FLEX ($5.9 million) owed to CoinFLEX in return for an equity stake in Open Exchange. 

Blockchain.com, Lamb and Ver did not immediately respond to Blockworks request for comment. 

---

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

• The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
• 0xResearch: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst.
• Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.
• Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.
• The Drop: Apps, games, memes and more.
• Lightspeed: All things Solana.
• Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.