Two of Denver’s early bitcoin diehards have turned what used to be a tight-knit friendship into a high-stakes legal brawl that could be worth roughly $25 million. James Hilliard and Michael Dupree, once collaborators in the city’s bitcoin community, are now locked in a fight over a January 2018 document that one side says records a 69.8-bitcoin loan. The dispute has been pushed into arbitration and has also landed in the Denver District Court, as both men ask officials to decide whether the paper is a legitimate contract or a fake.
According to BusinessDen, a six-page contract dated Jan. 8, 2018, appears to memorialize a loan of 69.8 bitcoins from Hilliard to EasyBit, and Hilliard’s attorneys say Dupree has not repaid any of it. A demand filed with the American Arbitration Association seeks about $7.8 million for the bitcoin principal plus roughly $16.4 million in interest and a 5% premium, for a total claim of around $25.4 million. Dupree, through counsel, calls the contract a fabrication and has asked Denver District Judge Heidi Kutcher to hold an evidentiary hearing to dig into what he says is fraud.
EasyBit, the bitcoin ATM operator at the center of the clash, traces its commercial presence back to the mid 2010s. Trademark records list the EASYBIT mark with a first use in commerce in 2014 and show it registered to an entity tied to Dupree, according to Justia Trademarks. Around the same time, industry coverage chronicled EasyBit rolling out bitcoin ATMs across several states, a buildout that created the liquidity demands Hilliard says led to repeated short term bitcoin loans to the company, per Finance Magnates.
What Each Side Says
In an affidavit, Hilliard says he loaned bitcoin to EasyBit multiple times in 2015 and 2016 and that the January 2018 document simply formalized one of those loans. He says he repeatedly pressed Dupree for repayment and got nowhere…