In an important decision in the developing law on cryptocurrency fraud, the English High Court has discharged an interim proprietary injunction against the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. The interim injunction had required Binance to preserve certain cryptocurrency that the claimant, the alleged victim of a cryptocurrency fraud, claimed to be able to trace to the exchange: Piroozzadeh v Persons Unknown and Others [2023] EWHC 1024 (Ch).
We have previously reported on some of the steady flow of decisions (collected here) demonstrating how the English courts are responding to the various novel issues arising in the crypto context. Those issues include both the substantive legal position under English law and the availability of interim measures to trace and freeze cryptoassets.
There have been a number of recent cases in which the High Court has granted interim proprietary injunctions against cryptocurrency exchanges on a without notice basis. This is the first decision we are aware of where a cryptocurrency exchange has challenged the grant of such an injunction, and it highlights a number of important issues that claimants and their legal advisers need to consider when contemplating such an application.
Herbert Smith Freehills LLP acts for Binance in relation to the claim.
For more detail, see this post on our Litigation Notes blog.
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