The former chairman of the Competition and Markets Authority has sued four crypto firms including Binance for almost £10bn over alleged collusion to delist a major cryptocurrency from their exchanges.
Lord David Currie, who chaired the CMA from 2014 to 2018, has filed a claim against the crypto giant, as well as exchanges Kraken, Bittylicious and Shapeshift over their delisting of the BSV token.
The lawsuit, filed on July 29 at the Competition Appeal Tribunal, is the first crypto competition claim in the UK and comes on behalf of an estimated quarter of a million investors in BSV.
Lord Currie said investors lost £9.9bn in 2019 as a result of alleged “anti-competitive behaviour” by the exchanges.
In a statement, he described the case as “an opportunity to demonstrate that competition law applies in the sphere of crypto-assets in the same way it does to other economic activities”.
Lord Currie has set up a new company, BSV Claims, to pursue the case.
Financial news has approached Binance, Kraken, Bittylicious, Shapeshift, BSV Claims and Lord Currie for comment.
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The claim is the latest example of UK lawyers seeking to apply broader financial services laws to the digital assets industry.
In July, a Supreme Court judge ruled that exchanges should be responsible for stopping criminals from moving assets off their platforms to avoid scrutiny, in a decision that experts said treated crypto the same as traditional finance.
What is BSV and why is it controversial?
BSV, also known as Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, was created in an effort to improve bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency. Binance removed the token in April 2019, following a Twitter spat between CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao and the token’s creator, Craig Wright.
CZ tweeted that Wright “poisoned” the bitcoin community by threatening to sue people who called him a fraud for claiming to be bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. He added: “Craig Wright is not Satoshi. We’re removing more of this filth!”
The Binance boss then encouraged others to follow suit, which Kraken, Bittylicious and Shapeshift did within 24 hours.
Erik Voorhees, CEO of Shapeshift, referenced CZ in his follow-up announcement: “We stand with @binance and CZ’s sentiments. We have decided to remove Bitcoin SV #BSV from @ShapeShift_io within 48 hours.”
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Wright, an Australian computer scientist living in Surrey, continues to claim that he is Nakamoto, which has neither been proven nor disproved.
The Competition Appeal Board will decide whether the case should be taken up for consideration. Law firm Velitor acts for BSV Claims.
To contact the author of this story with feedback or news, email Alex Daniel
