Help Needed To Access Our Ethereum Wallet
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- Our 7 year battle with Etheruem Foundation -
The last few years have been utterly challenging for our family. Like everyone else, Covid/Pandemic impact did not help our situation. As supportive members of our community, our inability to support our family, friends, and local businesses whom the effects of the pandemic have hardly hit compounds the anxiety.
We never gave up on seeking out new opportunities. The well-being of our children, family, friends, and people in our community always motivated us to push beyond our limits and stay optimistic against all odds.
It was optimism that helped build our faith when we participated during the launch of the Ethereum coins genesis sale. It is the same optimism that triggered the launch of this gofundme campaign. Somehow, we have faith, believing that you will support us in whichever way you can.
During the 2014 Ethereum Initial Coin Offering (ICO) Event, we had purchased a total of 3000 ETH Coins because we believed it would become a leading blockchain platform. At the time of the transaction, the Ethereum Foundation was supposed to send over our JSON file, which will give us access to the Ethereum wallet that contained our coins.
While the wallet address populated with the character encrypted password successfully generated, the most important. .JSON file refused to respond as it was supposed to. We had read through the instructions as we were advised. We had also left our computer on for more than ninety minutes as instructed. Unfortunately, the progress bar froze, and that became the genesis of our struggles to this day. There was a provision made by the foundation to enter your email address and a backup.wallet.JSON file would be sent. The email never showed. Two subsequent professional scrubs of the hard drive concluded that the .JSON file was not present.
While we have done everything possible to gain access to our wallet, Ethereum, on the other hand, reassured us that they had a backup wallet file which they would email to us. Unfortunately, no one from their end followed up with the resolution as the email never came through.
After one year of Private Sales, Ethereum went live. It became harder to reach them as the project became successful and attracted millions of cryptocurrency enthusiasts like you and me, who believe in blockchain technology and decentralization.
Even now, we can see the contents of our Ethereum wallet, which is currently valued at more than $5.9 million; unfortunately, we have no means to access the coins in our wallet despite having the CoinBase time-stamped receipt and character password, notwithstanding all the other efforts we have put in.
In 2017, we hired an attorney from DC. After a year of working on the case, we were told that this must be filed in Switzerland, where Ethereum Foundation is now headquartered. We have obtained a Swiss attorney. Dr. Haykaz Zoryan. The case was filed for conciliation in Zug, Switzerland, on March 1st, 2018.
We have met with an Ethereum Foundation attorney via video conference. They admit that we are the wallet's rightful owner and would try to retrieve the JSON file for us. Mr. Patrick Storchenegger, Ethereum Foundation Counsel, contacted Dr. Zoryan several weeks later to state that "they could retrieve the. JSON file but not the encrypted password."
When we replied that we have the password saved on a flash drive and were only seeking our backup.wallet.json file, we received an extremely discouraging and demoralizing response letter stating that they (the Ethereum Foundation) were not responsible for nor are the custodians of our wallet!
Mr. Storchenegger then stated that he prefers not to arbitrate in the ICC courts in Paris, France, and suggests settling for the wallet's value minus the court cost and traveling expenses as he would provide the ETH in a subsequent wallet minus the fees that he would incur.
We have decided to ask for your help through this campaign because Mr. Patrick Storchenegger, who till this day is a member of Ethereum's board of Trustees, reneged on his offer despite our reluctant agreement.
As suggested by our attorney, our next line of action will be to file the claim through the International Chamber Of Commerce (ICC). We cannot do this all alone because of the hundreds of thousands involved with filing a case at this level in the ICC courts.
We call on all lovers of equity and fairness who want to see justice prevail to help us raise a total of two hundred fifty thousand dollars as estimated by the ICCWBO calculator here - https://iccwbo.org/dispute-resolution-services/arbitration/costs-and-payments/cost-calculator needed to file this claim to establish access to our Ethereum wallet which is just to a .JSON file in which it was stated that a back-up wallet .JSON file would be emailed. 
*The result provides an estimation of the advance on costs that may be fixed by the Court. Due to the rounding of figures, the estimate may vary slightly from the amount resulting from the application of the scales published in Appendix III to the ICC Rules of Arbitration.
The total advance on costs is, for illustrative reasons only, based on the average arbitrator’s fees. However, the Court is free to and regularly does, fix arbitrator’s fees an amount higher or lower than the average.
The estimation has no legal implications and should not be considered as necessarily reflecting the Court will fix in any given case.
Furthermore, the estimation does not include a budget for the arbitrators’ expenses, which are also paid upfront as part of the advance on costs. - ICC Website
This Ethereum battle has been going on for 7 years. We spent thousands of dollars in legal fees already but we still don't have any answers. Not only that, my family has been through a lot. Just a few years ago, we lost everything we had to a house fire and had been on a long path to recovery since then. We are in dire need of some stability and still want to do a lot more for our community's less privileged people.
Our house was on fire on 7/3/2016 over 100 firemen came to the rescue. So grateful no one was hurt. (https://www.friendshipfireassoc.org/home/2016-news-archives/)
Click Here for our Housefire story
When all our hopes are diminished in times like these, you are our last line of defense, and your little token of love and support towards this campaign will help push us closer to our most desired goal.
Dear friends, kindly donate as little or as much as you can towards this campaign. We also appeal to you to help us share this campaign across various social media platforms. We hope that the Ethereum Board of Trustees will see this campaign and grant us the required file, which is the right thing to do.
Thank you for your love and support!
Williams Family
Click Here for our Story on YouTube