{"id":72835,"date":"2023-01-20T11:46:55","date_gmt":"2023-01-20T09:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=72835"},"modified":"2025-09-09T10:36:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T07:36:14","slug":"compass-mining-asked-to-return-1-75-million-for-equipment-located-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/compass-mining-asked-to-return-1-75-million-for-equipment-located-in-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Compass Mining asked to return $1.75 million for equipment located in Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

On January 17, clients of Texas-based mining company Compass Mining filed a lawsuit<\/a> seeking more than $1.75 million in damages for equipment located in Russia.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs allege fraud, breach of contract, and negligence after ending cooperation with the Russian data-center operator BitRiver, which housed Compass Mining’s miners at its facilities in Siberia.<\/p>\n

Specifically, after in April 2022 the OFAC<\/span> imposed sanctions on BitRiver<\/a>, the Texas company did not attempt to recover the equipment, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBitRiver rejected and ignored all of our requests, as it is not the owner of the equipment. Compass Mining should have told BitRiver that they are merely intermediaries, and that the machines are paid for and belong to the plaintiffs,\u201d the statement says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In addition, the clients reported that Compass overstated the uptime of 95% of the machines \u2014 in reality it did not exceed 50-60%. Some claimed that they were offline for weeks.<\/p>\n

On January 18, a district judge dismissed the clients’ suit against Compass Mining, citing several deficiencies that prevented the case from moving forward. The plaintiffs have until February 3 to file a second amended complaint.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cFailure to comply with this order will result in dismissal of the case without further notice,\u201d the judge concluded.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Compass Mining, in comments to Decrypt<\/a>, described the lawsuit documents as \u201cfalse\u201d and said they are confident that they \u201clack merit and contain key elements\u201d.<\/p>\n

Additionally, company representatives told users that the firm \u201ccannot conduct or even facilitate any business relationship with the Russian hosting center\u201d. However, according to the plaintiffs, OFAC sanctions \u201cdo not prohibit American legal or natural persons from winding down or withdrawing from existing investments in projects or activities in Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n

Experts note that Compass Mining may have some legal protection from the suit thanks to the Terms of Service Agreement.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cUpon expiration or termination of this agreement and full payment of all sums due to Compass, the client must arrange the return of their equipment at their own expense,\u201d the document states.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If a second complaint is filed, the court will need to determine whether including such protection in the Terms of Use against unforeseen events could lead to early termination of the client agreement.<\/p>\n

In April 2022, Compass Mining began seeking buyers in Russia for BitRiver-hosted mining devices valued at $30 million with a total capacity of 12 MW, which could not be exported from the country.<\/p>\n

Follow ForkLog’s bitcoin news on our Telegram<\/a> \u2014 cryptocurrency news, prices and analysis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 17, the clients of Texas-based mining company Compass Mining filed a lawsuit seeking more than $1.75 million for equipment located in Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1567,2237,1162,1137],"class_list":["post-72835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-bitriver","tag-compass","tag-court-cases","tag-cryptocurrency-mining"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"25","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72837,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72835\/revisions\/72837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}