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The proceeds from Tezos' record initial coin offering have surged, but bitter infighting has broken out among its backers. The head of a Swiss foundation meant to govern Tezos' assets could come up the big winner, finews.com reports.

Tezos founder Arthur Breitman (pictured below) was in good humor when he detailed his digital currency to a fintech audience in Zurich last week.

The mood changed when a listener probed him about the hundreds of millions of Swiss francs from a July initial coin offering, which are now blocked. Breitman deferred the question an all related financial ones to a Zug-based foundation set up this spring to govern the proceeds. He declined to respond to finews.com when asked about the fight.

Accusations Fly

His reticence lays bare that the dispute between Tezos' authors, Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, and the president of a Swiss foundation for Tezos, Johann Gevers, is one for the lawyers.

The Breitmans face three separate class-action lawsuits in the U.S.: disgruntled investors don't agree that the «Tezzie» coin be classified as a donation towards its development and future launch, and not a securities investment.

The Franco-American couple accuse Gevers of failing to adequately promote the project. They also say he wanted to smuggle a large bonus for himself past the other foundation overseers, Guido Schmitz-Krummenacher and Diego Ponz.

$820 Million Tezos Pot

As Breitman works with a Paris-based development team to launch the Tezzie, a Swiss auditor has conducted a review of the foundation. The results will be presented to Gevers and the other two foundation board members to decide the next steps, according to a statement.

Tezos is a minefield of structures, vehicles, murky governance and elaborate contracts. The fight is, of course, not about the promising Tezos technology, which wants to eventually replace the Ethereum network – instead, it is about money.

July's ICO took in a record-breaking $232 million, of which the Breitmans are set to skim a whopping 8.5 percent – or nearly $20 million – off the top, as finews.com reported in August.

Gevers In Control

Because the ICO contributors paid up mainly in bitcoin or ether, the assets held by the foundation have skyrocketed alongside a surge in the cryptocurrencies in recent months. They now stand at $820 million, meaning the Breitmans are in line for $70 million. But the pile, now partly converted into cash, is controlled by their archenemy, Gevers.