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Judge Chris McAliley of the Southern District Court of Florida dismissed the lawsuit for alleged manipulation of the Bitcoin Cash market.
The facts relate to November 2018, the day the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) fork took place which led to the birth of Bitcoin SV (BSV).
The lawsuit was initiated by a Florida-based blockchain company, United American Corp (UnitedCorp), which accused nine individuals of being complicit in manipulating the BCH market during the 2018 fork.
Among those accused were Bitmain, with co-founder Jihan Wu, Kraken, with founder Jesse Powell, Roger Ver and developers Amaury Sechet, Shammah Chancellor and Jason Cox.
Allegedly, Roger Ver, Kraken and the developers of Bitcoin Cash had colluded with Bitmain and redirected the hashpower to BCH at the exact time the fork was planned.
This would have forced the network to implement the Bitcoin ABC project, and caused irreparable damage to the BCH network itself, to the detriment of UnitedCorp and other stakeholders.
According to UnitedCorp, this collusion violated US antitrust laws and limited the competition rights of other companies.
Had the complaint been upheld, this would have been the first US antitrust case involving companies in the crypto world.
The court removed Sechet and Bitcoin.com from the list of the accused and also rejected the request for a 90-day extension.
However, the lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice, so the plaintiff may also file a new, amended version.
In this regard, Roger Ver stated:
“My understanding is that means that UnitedCorp basically has lost their case already, but the judge is letting them amend it to see if they can come up with a better argument”.
The President and CEO of UnitedCorp, Benoit Laliberte, pointing out that the court’s ruling has nevertheless recognized the importance of establishing regulations in a world so far rather undefined, he commented:
“Bitcoin was developed as a decentralized and distributed peer‐to‐peer electronic cash system operating under democratic principles created within the network. Any move to centralize or control the network is against its very philosophy and foundation”.