Series of Lawsuits Filed in New York Federal Court, Top Crypto Exchanges & Token Issuers Under Scrutiny

Coming as a negative development in the cryptosphere, seven cryptocurrency firms have been targeted by eleven lawsuits that were filed in a New York federal court on 3rd April.

Notably, the lawsuits were filed by Roche Freedman. Interestingly, this firm is also representing the estate of the late Dave Kleiman in the continuing argument with Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto.

The eleven alleged class action suits name several parties including digital asset exchanges KuCoin, BiBox, Binance, BitMEX, and its parent company HDR Global Trading Limited. The alleged cryptocurrency issuers comprises the Tron Foundation, Block.one, Civic, Quantstamp, Status, KayDex, and BProtocol.

Several establishment’s principals are named in the lawsuit. This includes more than a few key figures in the cryptocurrency domain counting in Changpeng Zhao (CEO of Binance), Brendan Blumer (CEO of Block.one), Vinny Lingham (CEO of Civic), and Dan Larimer (CTO of Block.one).

The lawsuit claims that several cryptocurrency exchanges have sold unlicensed securities without broker-dealer licensing and got involved in unscrupulous market manipulation.

Furthermore, the plaintiffs argue that numerous token issuers selectively held back information from investors to make certain that it would not be discernible if the tokens comprised securities until well after the sale of the respective token.

Usually, the judgements in such cases are not straightforward. The dispersion of regulators’ and analysts’ views on the status of legality of cryptocurrencies has been widening for a while, and this lawsuit may have taken things up another notch. This development could be a prelude of kindred lawsuits to come.