Seven cryptocurrency firms, including Binance, BitMEX, Block.one and the Tron Foundation have been hit by lawsuits filed in New York.

Eleven class action lawsuits were filed with a New York federal court on 3 April by law firm Roche Freedman, targeting forty-two defendants, including Binance, KuCoin, BiBox, BitMEX, HDR Global Trading Limited, Block.one, Quantstamp, KayDex, Civic, BProtocol, Status, and the Tron Foundation.

The lawsuits also name many of the companies’ principals, including blockchain A-listers like Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, Block.one CTO Dan Larimer and CEO Brendan Blumer, and Civic co-founder and CEO Vinny Lingham.

Specifically, the lawsuits allege the companies were involved in selling unlicensed securities without broker-dealer licensing, and that they engaged in market manipulation of cryptocurrencies. It is also claimed that some of the token issuers withheld critical information, pertaining to the tokens being securities, from investors.

The law firm filing the suits, Roche Freedman, is also representing the estate of the late Dave Kleiman in the ongoing, high-profile battle with self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright.

AYO.NEWS says:

Given the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis, and the fact that defendants are residing or based in sixteen different countries, any progress on these cases will likely be extremely slow, and will most likely result in many already very familiar arguments being rehashed.

The United States’ obsession with the issue of cryptocurrencies and their relation to securities is like the never ending story, and despite countless arguments, no one seems any closer to reaching a consensus. All things considered, we doubt any of the companies targeted by these lawsuits will lose sleep over it, and we’d say the whole episode is just another exercise in revenue generation for law firms.  

AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.

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