Those familiar with the career of Elon Musk and his use of tongue-in-cheek conventions (such as tweeting about taking Tesla private at $420 a share), were probably not surprised, based on the many reports of actions he took relating to Dogecoin, that the new government commission he has been tasked with co-leading has the acronym DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). And, within days of the report of the creation of DOGE, the plaintiffs who brought…
In re Celsius Network LLC, Case No. 22-10964 (MG) (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Oct. 24, 2024), was a case in bankruptcy court in New York in which the litigation administrator for the post-effective date debtors in the well-publicized bankruptcy of the Celsius cryptocurrency platform brought suit attempting to avoid allegedly fraudulent transfers and recover property of the bankruptcy estate. These particular transfers were made to digital wallets and cryptocurrency exchange accounts of defendants who were anonymous. Neither…
In 2021, we reported that the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire dismissed a lawsuit that sought to block the United States Internal Revenue Service’s effort to obtain records from cryptocurrency exchanges that included account information about individual accounts. In a decision on September 24, 2024, the First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that dismissal. The case concerned a 2019 episode in which the IRS sent about 10,000 letters to taxpayers…
BitMEX is a cryptocurrency exchange and derivative trading platform. It is owned and operated by HDR Global Trading Limited, which is registered in the Seychelles. HDR is an acronym of the last names of its founders, Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Sam Reed. In 2020, Plaintiffs brought a putative class action against the founders and HDR alleging multiple violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (“CEA”), including price manipulation. The Defendants moved to dismiss the case…
There has been much publicity over the lawsuit brought against celebrities such as Tom Brady and Larry David for their endorsement of FTX. In that case, the judge refused a request to serve Shaquille O’Neal through social media platforms, including Twitter, based on O’Neal’s allegedly taking steps to avoid service. But there is a similar case in Miami, assigned to district judge Cecilia M. Altonaga, brought against Tom Nash and other social media influencers in…
Since the beginning of blockchain and cryptocurrency, it was apparent that there would be emerging legal issues unique to them, while other legal issues would be applied in the same way as they have always been applied, but simply to a new technology. The case discussed in this post looks at the issue of personal jurisdiction through that prism. HEX is a cryptocurrency marketed as the first blockchain certificate of deposit. Defendant CoinMarketCap is a…
Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and Paul Pierce are among the defendants being sued for their role in promoting EthereumMax (“EMAX”), a cryptocurrency project centered around the EthereumMax tokens, a blockchain-based digital asset. The Defendants moved to dismiss the lawsuit. In the decision granting the motion, the Court first noted that Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (“PSLRA”) likely barred the claim based on its excluding RICO claims. To his surprise, however, Defendants did not seek…
We previously reported that, in July 2019, the IRS announced that it had begun sending the now infamous letters to taxpayers who, supposedly, may have failed to properly report income and pay taxes associated with cryptocurrency transactions. About 10,000 of these Letter 6173 were sent. On tax day (July 15 this year) the IRS was sued in connection with these letters. The complaint alleges that Plaintiff James Harper opened an account with Coinbase in 2013. …
On April 30, 2020, the court in Takata v. Riot Blockchain, Inc., et al., No. 18-02293 (D. N.J.), dismissed a securities class action against Riot Blockchain and certain investors. Riot Blockchain, previously known as Bioptix, transitioned its business in 2017 into building and operating blockchain technologies. The Complaint alleged that the investor defendants, acting as a group, amassed a controlling interest in the company. Plaintiff claimed that the investors engaged in manipulative trading to artificially…
On April 3, 2020, multiple class-action law suits were filed in the Southern District of New York against a host of crypto exchanges and token issuers, including Binance, Bibox, KuCoin, HDR Global Trading Ltd (which operates BitMEX), Tron Foundation, Block.one, BProtocol Foundation (also known as Bancor), Civic Technologies Inc., the Kyber Network, Quantstamp Inc., and Status Research & Development GmbH. Investors Chase Williams, Alexander Clifford, William Zhang, and Eric Lee, on behalf of the proposed investor classes, allege…