- A judge has thrown out the evidence of a so-called expert witness in a case against XRB developers
- David Weisberger was accused of having “no reliable basis” for his opinions
- Former XRB holders are suing developers over the loss of their tokens in a 2018 exchange hack
A judge in a class action lawsuit against a group of Nano developers has thrown out the evidence of a so-called expert witness because his opinion had no “reliable basis”. As The Block reports, the evidence of David Weisberger, co-founder and CEO of trading tool creator CoinRoutes, was dismissed by U.S. District judge Yvonne Roger due to his reliance on unsupported speculation and a “woeful lack of knowledge” on the subject matter. This will have done little to aid the cause of the plaintiffs in the case, a group of former XRB token holders who lost their tokens when the Bitgrail exchange was hacked in 2018.
XRB Token Holders Lost $170 Million in Bitgrail Hack
Mr Weisberger had been called as an expert witness on the subject of cryptocurrency and Nano (then called RaiBlocks) in particular. He was asked to support the case of a group of former XRB token holders who claim they were coerced into moving their tokens over to Bitgrail by developers, which was hacked shortly after they did so, with around 17 million XRB tokens stolen, worth some $170 million at the time.
The lawsuit alleges that the developers spent the weeks leading up to the rebrand “directing the investing public to purchase XRB through BitGrail by providing specific investment instructions and assurances that the cryptocurrency exchange was secure and could be trusted to safeguard investment assets”.
However, Mr Weisberger may have done their cause more harm than good after Judge Roger denounced his evidence as reflecting “a high level of speculation, untethered to and unsupported by any facts in the record”. She added that Weisberger “has no reliable basis in forming his opinions or conclusions”, even concluding that much of his “woeful lack of knowledge as to XRB” was gained through social media and lacked any methodology.
More Harm Than Good?
While it is not unusual for a judge to discard evidence by a witness, her public evisceration of Weisberger and the evidence he gave is striking in its rarity and reflects just how poor his attempts to support the plaintiffs must have been. Court records show that Weisberger earned some $10,000 for his time giving evidence. Nice work if you can get it.
