UK judges rejected a $11.9 billion claim from BSV investors, ruling that they could have mitigated losses after Binance and others had delisted the token.
The United Kingdom’s Court of Appeal has partially dismissed a lawsuit brought by Bitcoin SV investors against major crypto exchanges, including Binance, for allegedly conspiring to delist the token in 2019.
In a judgment handed down on May 21, the court ruled that investors who held BSV through the delisting period (classified as “sub-class B”) were not entitled to billions in speculative damages based on BSV’s hypothetical growth.
These investors had claimed over 8.9 billion British pounds ($11.9 billion) in damages, asserting that Binance’s delisting deprived holders of the chance to profit from BSV’s potential rise to a “top-tier cryptocurrency” like Bitcoin
$111,237
or Bitcoin Cash
$431.54
.
The court rejected this “foregone growth effect” theory, stating, “BSV was obviously not a unique cryptocurrency without reasonably similar substitutes,” pointing to the representative’s own use of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash as comparators.
Sub-class B’s central claim was that delisting led to a missed opportunity to benefit from price appreciation. However, the court determined that those investors had ample chance to mitigate losses by selling or reinvesting in other crypto assets.
“They had a duty to mitigate their losses,” wrote Master of the Rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos. “They cannot recover losses that they could reasonably have mitigated.”
