Bolt cofounder Ryan Breslow is back.

Three years after he stepped down as the CEO of the payment startup, Breslow has now been reinstated after years of board room disputes, lawsuits, a SEC probe, and a crumbling valuation that tumbled 97% from its $11 billion peak.

“I’ve made a ton of mistakes and the last few years were a very humbling experience for me,” said Breslow, speaking on stage at the Fintech Meetup conference on Monday. “I'm a warrior, but the last three years challenged me to my breaking point and beyond.”

Part of Breslow’s comeback plan included a controversial $450 million funding scheme, announced last August, in which investors faced a 48-hour ultimatum to match their earlier investment or face 70% of their shares effectively being wiped out. Some of Bolt’s largest investors, Blackrock, Hedosophia and Untitled, sued to block it. But the plan is now effectively dead. Bolt has settled the suit, and will pay $3 million to cover its investors' legal costs. A temporary restraining order imposed as part of the legal action has also been lifted.

In his Monday speech, Breslow defended his 2021 decision to take a $30 million loan secured against his shares in Bolt. The Bolt cofounder claimed in the speech that the loan was meant to run until the startup’s IPO but the board decided to call in the loan after he stepped back as CEO in January 2022. A dispute over how the loan was meant to be repaid led to the money being swept from Bolt’s bank account, Breslow firing three investor board members, and a lawsuit from investor Activant pushing for Bolt to be repaid from Breslow’s own shares.

Bolt paid Activant $37 million for its shares, and the same value of Breslow’s shares in the startup were cancelled, resolving both the loan and the long-running court case. Bolt did not provide additional comment beyond Breslow's statements

“I wanted to show all of our investors that I’m keeping all my chips in…I did it to be all in on Bolt for the long run,” said Breslow.

Breslow said he had learned some lessons from the crises that engulfed his Amazon-style one-click payments startup, once valued at over $11 billion. Bolt offered to buy back shares from its investors at just a $300 million valuation in February before unveiling a fundraising round in August that valued the startup at $14 billion.

“We learned a lot through the last three years of what doesn't work,” said Breslow. “I think I've come out of the experience of the last three years with a couple probably PhDs in law and governance.”

The 30 Under 30 alum credits Bolt’s new board with helping him to weather several rounds of layoffs, investor disputes and now resolved lawsuits with major customers like Authentic Brands Group and sportswear maker Fanatics. “We needed to make sure our board was all in and once we finally got that right we were able to withstand the challenges,” he said.

After removing investors like Activant’s Steve Sarracino and Tribe Capital’s Arjun Sethi from Bolt’s board, Breslow hired several friends and associates like journalist Esther Wojcicki and crypto investor Brock Pierce, later replacing them with property developer Joel Schreiber. Court filings indicate that Bolt’s board is now made up of Schreiber, who is embroiled in a $100 million legal battle with real estate giant Starwood, and Breslow’s friend and music producer Larrance Dopson, and gaming entrepreneur Michael Carter. Bolt did not respond to a request to name its new board.

“I didn't make the mistakes that I was accused of making, but I made plenty of other mistakes.”

Bolt and Breslow have also churned through at least six major law firms over the last three years of legal battles. “You name a top law firm, there's a good chance we've hired them and even fired them or had them quit on us,” said Breslow. “Ultimately, we had to determine our own legal strategy…because of that, we were able to do things that a lot of law firms thought were impossible, find peace, find settlements, find outcomes that were really good.”

Breslow was characteristically bullish on the prospect for Bolt now he is back at the helm, talking up deals with ecommerce website Revolve, Richemont Group and LVMH’s Benefit Cosmetics. He also pushed the idea of Bolt expanding from offering a one-click checkout service for retailers to pushing financial products, crypto and peer to peer payments to the 80 million shoppers who have made a purchase using its platform — a so-called “super app.”

British banking startup Revolut, which was valued at a $45 billion in share sale in August, seems to be Breslow’s inspiration. But catching up with the London-based company, which generated $545 million profit on $2.2 billion of revenue in 2023, will take a lot of work from Bolt’s new CEO. Over the same period, Bolt recorded a $302 million loss on just $27 million of revenue.