It’s 8:45 on the morning of June 13 when Bill Stewart, CEO of Maine-based bitcoin mining business Dynamics Mining, received a call from one of his employees. “He was like, ‘Every machine inside our facility in Brunswick [in Cumberland County, Maine] Stewart said. “It’s crazy. I can’t believe it.”
He warned employees who were operating another mining facility, in nearby Lewiston [in Androscoggin County, Maine], and tell them to “give up.” He thinks there is a big thief. Stewart had a theory as to who might have taken the machines: In those days, he was arguing with a client, Compass Mining — a Delaware company that allowed people to buy mining machines and have them stored. stored in third-party facilities such as Stewart’s – due to disputes over energy bills. Stewart thinks Compass should pay them; Compass believes their contract says otherwise.
A few days earlier, Dynamics had sent Compass a cease-and-desist letter asking for payment and shortly thereafter shut down the company’s machine. Compass Mining employees then took their equipment out of Brunswick, and they prepared to enter the Lewiston plant to restore more machines. “They’re trying to get inside the building,” said Stewart. “And I’m saying to my brother, who runs our security, ‘Don’t let them in the building. We don’t separate miners from the wall. Don’t let them in. ‘”
In a lawsuit against Dynamics in Chancery Delaware Court on June 21, Compass Mining alleges that Stewart, having refused to pay the energy bill he had to pay, had “kept this valuable equipment as work.” hostages to gain leverage in the negotiations.” As Stewart tells it, he simply wanted the removal to be orderly rather than rushed and obscured by darkness. Furthermore, he said, for a while he considered continuing to host machines on behalf of Compass customers, eliminating the middleman. “Their customers contacted them and said, ‘Hey, can we dig directly with you,’” says Stewart. “. The reason that couldn’t happen, says Stewart, was because Compass didn’t give its customers the identifying serial numbers of the machines they bought, and there was no way for Stewart to know who owned what. .
On July 5, the Court accepted Compass’s request to get its machines back, but insisted that would happen after a formal request to disconnect and relocate the machines. Stewart says that during the removal process, Compass’ team also acquired one of Dynamics’ own servers — this was confirmed in an email by one of Compass’s attorneys to Stewart, referring to the server being deleted. “accidentally revoked” and asked how to revert it.
“Our team is focused on serving our customers and will do so in accordance with the contracts we have with our service providers and by resolving any disputes arising from fundamental misunderstandings. writing about these contracts in court,” said Thomas Heller, interim co-CEO of Compass in an email interview.
Even with Compass already dominant, this row’s optics are terrible. Stewart documented the dispute on Twitter as it unfolded — alleging Compass owed him hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy bills and essentially broke into Dynamics’ premises — and extended his stand against Compass. on Twitter Spaces. After a dizzying rise, Compass had spent the last few months in a state of constant crisis, until – just hours after Stewart began tweeting about his early morning confrontation with the company – it has decided to remove its chief executive. At the center of that crisis is Russia’s war with Ukraine, and a bespectacled, curly-haired cybersecurity entrepreneur named Omar Todd.
