Crypto Prices Falls Down As Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Against Coinbase

A federal judge has discharged a complaint against Coinbase claiming the exchange offends investors when it registered bitcoin cash by letting insider trading. The announcement came as Cryptocurrency prices slipped on Thursday, with Bitcoin and Ethereum dropped more than 1 percent. The report says that a federal judge discharged lawsuit in contradiction of Coinbase received some attention.

Bitcoin dropped 1.2% to $6,507.5 by 12:40 AM ET (04:40GMT) on the Bitifinex exchange, Ethereum fell 1.8% to $203.88 and Litecoin was down 1.5% at $52.979. XRP lost 2.7% to $0.46067 on the Poloniex exchange.

This week, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, from the Northern District of California, discharged a lawsuit filed by Arizona resident Jeffrey Berk in March against Coinbase, CoinDesk reported. The report stated that Berk suspected that the exchange for allowing insiders to trade bitcoin cash preceding to its listing on the exchange.

According to Berk, expectedly, those who had been sloped off [about bitcoin cash’s listing], directly swamped Coinbase and the GDAX [sic] with the purchase and sell orders, retreating the liquidity but procurement BCH at fair prices. The market effect was to unethically drive up the price of BCH for non-insider traders once BCH came online at the Coinbase exchange.

In discharging the suit, Judge Chhabria mentioned that the complaint of Berk does not adequately express the legal basis for his claims, and enlightening that “a reader of the complaint is thus left speculating what Coinbase must have done otherwise, or why the rollout of bitcoin cash would have gone more effortlessly had Coinbase done whatever Berk thinks is suitable.”

According to a report published in Reuters Japan is currently letting cryptocurrency exchanges to self-regulate through the Japanese Virtual Currency Exchange Association. Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) will handover oversight powers to the production body.

Reuters cited an unnamed senior FSA official as saying, it’s a very fast-moving industry. It’s better for experts to make rules in an appropriate manner than bureaucrats do.

The ruling is significant to how the case may proceed, Palley said. While Coinbase has the option to file another motion to compel arbitration, the amended complaint is likely to move even further away from the user agreement than the original.

“A decent lawyer isn’t going to make a losing argument when they’ve already lost on the point before,” he said.

As a result, the case may then proceed through the court system.

While Palley did not speak to the merits or the claims made in Berk’s suit specifically, he noted that generally, if a lawsuit moves past a motion to dismiss and discovery and is certified as a class action, “in most cases these things settle.”

“If you’re a class, if I’m one person and I’ve lost $50 that’s not very much, but if I’m … representing 10 million people and we’ve all lost $10 then that’s $100 million. That’s the advantage of a class action,” he said.