River Financial, the Peter Thiel-backed BTC brokerage led by CEO Alex Leishman, has sued the Canadian BTC mining services business spun out of Adam Back’s Blockstream.
River’s complaint alleges Blockstream Services Canada, which was formerly part of Blockstream Corporation but now merely licenses its name after it spun-off in mid-2024, stopped paying and defaulted on a multi-million dollar settlement on March 31, 2026, remaining in default through September 11 when River filed its lawsuit.
A US magistrate judge has already recused himself from the complex lawsuit, and the court assigned the case to a new judge on September 15.
The president of Blockstream Services Canada who signed the December 13, 2024 early termination agreement with River was Christopher Cook. According to two researchers, Cook is a convicted felon who spent more than a year in prison for an unrelated fraud conviction.
The dispute at hand in this month’s new lawsuit dates to December 2021, when River signed a managed hosting agreement with Blockstream Services Canada. Leishman was then rolling out River Mining, selling hosted BTC miners.
River wants its bitcoin mining prepayments back
As part of that launch, River pre-paid almost $7.8 million in 2021 and 2022 for three Hosting Services Orders, depositing money for a variety of services from Blockstream.
By December 13, 2024, Blockstream still held $4.3 million of those prepayments, and the two companies had decided to sign a termination agreement to phase-out the initiative.
Both sides signed an exit deal on December 13, 2024. Under it, Blockstream owed River roughly $3.5 million refund of prepaid hosting fees and a $3.1 million early termination fee, $6.7 million in all.
The money was due in monthly installments of $239,389.40, starting August 1, 2025.
Read more: Adam Back says Liquid BTC is collateralized after dashboard problem
Although the timing of the lawsuit drew some concern that lawsuit was related to the recent hack of the Blockstream-supported Liquid network, Protos pulled all documents from the PACER docket and can confirm that the two incidents are entirely unrelated.
Indeed, River alleges the first missed installment occurred about half a year before the Liquid Network hack existed.
River sent demand letters for overdue payments to Blockstream Services Canada starting on April 10, warning that overdue amounts would accrue interest at 9.75%.
River also claims Blockstream Services Canada acknowledged the outstanding balance in writing on May 27.
The company alleges breach of contract and unjust enrichment.
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