Statement Concerning The Tezos Crowd Contribution And The Tezos Foundation

In recent weeks there have been reports in various media outlets and publications of differences of opinion and governance issues in regards to the Tezos Foundation internally as well as its founders.

Due to this, many of our clients and concerned contributors, participators and stakeholders from the Tezos Crowd Contribution have asked us to make a public statement on the topic.

Bitcoin Suisse AG (BTCSAG) acted as a crypto-financial service provider and intermediary in connection with the Tezos Crowd Contribution earlier this year, providing services to both individual contributors as well as the Tezos Foundation itself. Since the conclusion of the Crowd Contribution, BTCSAG has continued to provide crypto-financial services to the Tezos Foundation, including acting as a mandatory co-signatory on all crypto-asset transactions.

The terms for contribution in the Tezos Crowd Contribution (document: ‘Tezos Contribution and XTZ Allocation Terms and Explanatory Notes’) to which each contributor agreed in order to participate in the Crowd Contribution, specified that refunds post-contribution and after the close of crowd contribution would not be possible, due to both regulatory reasons as well as practical reasons.

For any potential change in this policy we refer to the Tezos Foundation as BTCSAG in its role as a crypto-financial service provider and intermediary is not part of the agreement between contributors and the Tezos Foundation, except on points which fall under the framework agreement for participation through BTCSAG.

It is not the place of BTCSAG to comment on matters internal the Tezos organization. All such questions should be answered by the Tezos Foundation. Instead we refer to the framework contract for participating in the Tezos Crowd Contribution through BTCSAG which every contributor accepted during the Crowd Contribution when onboarding through BTCSAG, as well as the Terms for participation in the Crowd Contribution from the side of the Tezos Foundation, mentioned above.

From the side of BTCSAG, we made it perfectly clear that Contribution towards the project was to be considered a highly risky proposition, even underlining this fact.

BTCSAG will naturally stand by its commitments towards all of our clients which were contributors in the Tezos Crowd Sale as well as the Tezos Foundation itself.

BTCSAG is currently not aware of any evidence that Contributor funds have been mismanaged, lost or are put at risk by the Tezos Foundation nor any party involved in the project.

BTCSAG also states that to the best of our knowledge, Ether (ETH) held by the Tezos Foundation, are unaffected from the recent issues regarding Parity multi-signature wallets.

We consider it likely that the Tezos project will suffer delays as a result of the internal differences. Nevertheless the crypto assets which were collected through the Crowd Contribution, while to a minor extent hedged/liquidated against various fiat currencies at this stage, for the most part are still being held by the Tezos Foundation with BTCSAG acting as a mandatory co-signatory service provider. As previously stated, to our current knowledge, no funds have been lost, mismanaged, stolen – nor would it seem they are at risk hereof.

Thus from the best of our knowledge, the Tezos Foundation remains one of the most well funded blockchain projects in the history of decentralized services, its current internal issues and disagreements notwithstanding.

This article first appeared on bitcoinsuisse.ch