The First Ever Bitcoin Legal Dispute Goes on Trial in Singapore

By Kapil Gauhar

The case is being held before the country’s International Commercial Court. The B2C2 and Quoine unilaterally reversed some of its trades from April 2017, according to The Straits Times.

Depending on the details of the dispute made available B2C2 made seven orders on April 19, 2017, to see Ethereum for Bitcoin. The transaction rate was set at 10 ETH/ETH, but Quoine called off the trade the following day with B2C2’s approval.

B2C2 wishes to recover the 3,085 BTC lost when Quoine reversed the seven Bitcoin to Ethereum trades in question. The market maker states that the actions of the exchange platform constituted a break of trust and amounted to the injustice of its role in terms of a trading platform operator.

Counsel for the plaintiff, in the opening statement, said –

“It is B2C2’s contention that in the face of the serious risk of itself having to bear the financial loss arising from the trades. Quoine chose the most advantageous course to mitigate such risk – by simply reversing the ‘irreversible’ trades and deducting the proceeds from the account.”

However, Quoine counters B2C2’s claims pointing towards the absurd 10 BTC/ETH order price. As indicated by the exchange platform, a glitch took place in its program prior to the trades in question. This glitch halted the platform from being able to available external price data thus the need to reverse the trade.

The counsel for Quoine, in a further counter, said –

“There is no other way than to describe these orders as abnormally and absurdly priced orders, given that they were about 250 times higher than the average price at which (the two currencies) then traded on the platform.”

Singapore continues to high the scope of its involvement in the emerging crypto narrative. The government recently declared its plans to firm up the city-state’s crypto regulatory landscape. Also, in October, it was reported that Singapore’s Monetary Authority was looking at the ways to help digital currency businesses access banking services.