Earlier today, Patrick Byrne, the founder and longtime CEO of former e-tailing giant Overstock.com resigned, saying his involvement as a federal informant in the investigation of infamous Russian spy Maria Butina made performing his duties impossible. That’s not the whole story. This is.
yrne is the son of the late John “Jack” Byrne, a University of Michigan-trained mathematician and renowned insurance executive credited with turning around Geico in the mid-1970s and persuading Warren Buffett to invest in the auto insurer. Geico would eventually become one of the biggest contributors to Berkshire Hathaway’s bottom line, and Buffett once described Byrne’s father as “the Babe Ruth of insurance.” When Byrne was in middle school, he gravitated toward his father’s friends.
Nothing kept Byrne’s attention very long. In 1994, he led an investment into Centricut, a New Hampshire-based industrial torch-part manufacturer, and served briefly as CEO when the current management fell ill. In 1997, he left to run Berkshire Hathaway’s Fechheimer Brothers, which made uniforms for police, firemen and military.
“Patrick gets very focused on something, and then when he sees the financials didn’t work out, he basically forces layoffs,” says Chad Huff, a former software developer. “Initiatives would get started, then shelved. Or they’d be half done and not in a great state but rolled out anyway.
On the plus side, Tzero has satisfied a set of fearsome regulatory requirements, most notably acquiring a company licensed as an alternative trading system. The problem is, with just two tokens—representing Overstock’s and Tzero’s own shares—available to trade on Tzero’s platform, almost no one uses it. The company says it is aiming for 5 to 10 tokens by year’s end.
In 2017, Byrne announced a joint venture with Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto Polar that would “challenge global poverty and inequality” by creating a blockchain-based global land registry. But when the two couldn’t agree on terms, Byrne ended up contributing $7 million of his personal capital to take a 43% stake in the newly formed Medici Land Governance.
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