Coinbase CEO offered to invest in a Blockchain startup so he could steal the work for a similar platform he was working on and eliminate the competitor!

A Blockchain startup filed a complaint against Coinbase's CEO Brian Armstrong in California's Supreme Court.,the complaint-

In June 2019 Armstrong offered to invest in Knowledgr-a platform used to distribute scientific papers with tokens offered as an incentive.The motive behind this investment by Armstrong is to steal the confidential information for ResearchHub, a similar platform he was working on and eliminate Knowledgr as a competitor"

-Mousebelt-the company was already investing in Knowledgr,Brian Armstrong offered financial backing to Knowledgr and the opportunity to list the tokens on Coinbase.

-Armstrong contacted Knowledgr's founder Patrick Joyce in June,2019 and offered to invest $50k for 1% share with a view to Coinbase making a larger investment and wired $50k in mid-july.

Meanwhile Armstrong was working with ResearchHub,develpoing the similar platform. So he promised a job to Joyce if he contributed to ResearchHub while remaining the Chief executive at Knowledgr while misleading Mousebelt in the process.

-Joyce used the algorithm originally intended for Knowledgr,for ResearchHub instead

On being asked, whether Joyce had recently been in touch with Armstrong or ResearchHub. Joyce stated that neither he nor anyone else at Knowledgr had been in touch with Armstrong during the previous four months. But later Joyce admitted the truth, which was that Armstrong had asked Joyce to work on ResearchHub during that same four month period and had been doing so.

Joyce's omission of this information was a breach of Knowledgr's agreement with Mousebelt and done to conceal Knowledgr's inappropriate actions.

Armstrong invested in Knowledgr with an intent to steal the work to not only eliminate a potential competitior but to obtain the benefits of the financial, design, technical resources Mousebelt put into Knowledgr,which would make ResearchHub to launch sooner at less cost a successful platform based entirely on Mousebelt's work.

By using his money and power Coinbase's CEO tried to kill the startup by stealing their work.This is just a ridiculous way to do it.

Source : Coindesk