Binance asked the U.K.’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to throw out most of a collusion case against it and three other crypto exchanges brought by BSV Claims in a suit that could be worth as much as 10 billion British pounds ($13 billion), Reuters reported.
The exchanges delisted the token in 2019, in what BSV Claims argues was collusion in anticompetitive behavior. As a result token holders missed out on potential gains of more than 9 billion pounds, the firm said. It calculated the loss by looking at gains made by other cryptocurrencies since then, BitMEX Research said.
Binance asked the tribunal to remove claims BSV could have become a major cryptocurrency. Binance laywer Brian Kennelly said BSV holders “could reasonably have sold it and reinvested it in comparable cryptocurrency”, according to Reuters.
The case is being brought on behalf of an estimated 240,000 U.K. investors, BSV Claims said when it was established in 2022. The company’s sole director is David Curries, a former chairman of the CAT and a member of the House of Lords, according to records at Companies House.
Other defendants in the case are Bittylicious, Kraken and Shapeshift.
A key backer of BSV is Craig Wright, who last month was ruled to have lied “extensively and repeatedly” in a London court examining his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of bitcoin.
The case is 1523/7/7/22 and is scheduled to end on June 7.
Edited by Stephen Alpher.
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Sheldon Reback is a CoinDesk news editor based in London. He owns a small amount of ether.