Company behind Zcash sued for $2 million

Zcash inventor Zooko Wilcox's Electric Coin Company—formerly the Zcash Company—is being sued for $2 million in damages by Simon Liu, a former employee who alleges the company skimped him out of 15,000 "units of common stock" promised to him under an amended contractual agreement struck in 2016. The suit, filed May 29, alleges that the company was fully aware it could not fulfil its promises, but made them anyway.

"Defendants knew the representation was false when they made it, or made the representation recklessly and without regard for the truth," wrote Seth Wiener, Liu's attorney, in the suit. Moreover, "the defendants had no reasonable grounds for believing [the promise] was true when they made it.

The suit also alleges that the Electric Coin Company, which develops so-called privacy coin Zcash, subjected Lui to "harsh working conditions," and threatened his termination on the grounds of "unsubstantiated and untrue allegations about Plaintiff's purported 'tendency to sow mistrust and discontent by making inaccurate statements and spreading unverified rumors to co-workers at Electric Coin Company."

The Electric Coin Company declined to comment on the case.