One board member resigned and another was removed by four other members of the Bitcoin Foundation at yesterday’s meeting.

“Jim and Olivier served as volunteers and we appreciate their time and work,” says Bobby Lee of BTCChina, Vice-Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, in a statement published on the Foundation site. However, while “the first priority should be to have a board that interacts effectively and efficiently,” the discrepancies among the board members grew so high that the team could not carry on productive work.

The final point of disagreement was whether the Bitcoin Foundation should continue to function or be dissolved. Chairman Brock Pierce, Bobby Lee, Elizabeth Ploshay and Meyer Malka voted to preserve it. Harper and Janssens spoke in favour of dissolution, quoting as the reason the Foundation’s lack of a more detailed plan for the future. After casting the votes, Harper resigned from the board and Janssens was removed by the four remaining members.

Speaking about the departure of Harper and Janssens, Lee stresses that “No one is right or wrong, we simply have different ideas. At the end of the day, we all care about Bitcoin and want to help it in whatever way possible.”

Olivier Janssens caused many controversies after becoming a member of the board of the Bitcoin Foundation in February 2015. Already in his election program he declared that Bitcoin Foundation was not transparent enough. In April he published an open letter claiming that the organisation was on the verge of bankruptcy and concealing it. The Foundation denounced Janssens’ statement and said that it was not supported by any serious facts. Still, later, on 20 October, Brock Pierce admitted that the Foundation was “close to running out of money.”

Alexey Tereshchenko