- A $13 billion crypto class action lawsuit in the UK is set for a key hearing in June
- Filed in July 2022, the claim accuses Binance, Kraken, Shapeshift, and Bittylicious of unfairly damaging BSV investors’ value by conspiring to delist it
- The June hearing will allow the judge to assess whether BSV Claims has a case
A $13 billion crypto class action lawsuit which alleges that an exchange cartel conspired to delist the Bitcoin fork BSV in 2019 is set for a key hearing in June. The claim, valued at £10 billion ($12.8 billion), was filed by BSV Claims in July 2022 and alleges that the operators of Binance, Kraken, Shapeshift, and Bittylicious conspired to delist BSV from their exchanges without warning holders, unfairly damaging the value of their investments. After more than one and a half years of preliminaries, the parties will set their case before a judge in June who will decide if the case has merit.
Conspiracy Claim to be Tested in Court
BSV Claims brought the case against the exchanges two years ago following the actions of the exchanges in question to delist BSV following the actions of its creator, Craig Wright, in suing various individuals in the crypto space for libel after they persistently called him a fraud over his Satoshi Nakamoto claims.
Wright’s benefactor, Calvin Ayre, helped found BSV Claims and paid for the suit to be filed through his Antiguan company, Softwhale Holdings, which will retain 20% of any award it receives. BSV Claims suggests that the exchanges should cover the losses of those holding BSV at the time that they all allegedly conspired to remove the Bitcoin fork from their platforms, with BSV Claims alleging that the whole thing was conducted through a Telegram group of which the exchange’s owners are all members.
BSV Claims Tackled First Hurdle
The first hurdle in BSV Claims’ claim is to obtain a collective proceedings order (CPO), which is essentially a certificate that allows the case to continue as a class action. In the UK as in other countries, a judge must rule whether the case qualifies as a class action using a set of criteria.
These include whether the claims of the individuals are similar enough in nature, that the representative claimant (BSV Claims) is an adequate representative of the claimants, that the number of claimants makes it impractical to be carried out on an individual basis, and that a class action is the best path forward for the claimants.
The hearing will take place across June 5-7 after which the judge will rule whether BSV Claims has merit, after which the proper legal process will begin. Were the case to go ahead and the full claim to be awarded it would be the biggest in the crypto space by some margin, but cases of this sort rarely see the full payout awarded.
