Coinbase is getting sued again. Users who filed a class action lawsuit against Coinbase will now go to court January 31, 2019. This is according to new court documents filed on November 20th of this year. At the heart of this lawsuit is how allegedly Coinbase handled Bitcoin Cash.
The lawsuit, which was brought forward by Jeffery Berk, addresses alleged insider trading of Bitcoin Cash among Coinbase officials in 2017. The previous lawsuit failed to make it to trial in October.
District Judge Vince Chhabria threw out Berk’s claims due to the failure to “describe the scope or content of Coinbase’s duty.”
A newly amended lawsuit focuses on the exchange purportedly falling foul of its own listing rules. “The sudden launch (of BCH) was effectively part of an attack by Coinbase and (CEO Brian Armstrong) to depress the price of BTC and to inflate the price of BCH to encourage more transactions and greater profitability for Coinbase,” the new filing reads.
Coinbase has until December 20th to respond before the initial hearing in January.
In September, Chhabria, the judge, claimed Coinbase had “bungled” the BCH rollout but was already considering throwing out Berk’s lawsuit with an opportunity to amend.
Coinbase has conducted an internal investigation with a focus on insider trading. They concluded in July that no such activity had taken place.
This is just another round of bad press for BCH, right after its hard fork on Nov 15th. The hard fork precipitated a major market volatility, a major chain split, and saw the entire cryptocurrency market drop in the double digits.
The aforementioned fork resulted in BCH diverging into two competing cryptocurrencies vying for the BCH handle – Bitcoin Cash SV and Bitcoin Cash ABC.
What do you think? We know Bakkt is coming in December, but this has been a string of bad news lately, particularly for BCH. Let us know what you think on our Facebook page!
