A RM3.2 million crypto dispute has landed in the Malaysian High Court, centering on Tether (USDT) and allegations of misappropriation.
The plaintiff sought a Mareva injunction to freeze assets, but the Court ruled there was not enough evidence of risk of dissipation of assets.
I write on the case of Sim Kwang Kai Adrian v Johnathon Wong Futt Po (see grounds of judgment dated 28 April 2025). Continue reading
In the English High Court case of Mr Dollar Bill Limited v Persons Unknown and two others [2021] EWHC 2718 (Ch), the Court granted a proprietary injunction against approximately 3.7 bitcoins (approximately GBP 105,000) and certain discovery orders against the two cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and Huobi. Continue reading
The Initial Litigation Offering or ILO – with something as simple as a website page or an app, anyone could potentially invest money to fund the costs of litigation. The investor is issued an ILO token, secure on the blockchain, as a share of the potential returns from the litigation. The ILO tokens themselves can be traded and sold on.
The Hong Kong Court of First Instance in Yan Yu Ying v Leong Wing Hei [2021] HKCFI 3160 granted a temporary proprietary injunction to restrain 999 bitcoins (value close to US$50 million) being the subject matter of a dispute between the parties.
This case shows the consistent trend of Courts treating cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin as ‘property’ that can be subject to an injunction.
In this case, the Court granted what is known in Hong Kong as an “interim-interim injunction”. It is similar to what is known in Malaysia as an ad interim injunction. It is a temporary measure to balance the fairness before the full arguments are heard on whether to grant the full interim injunction. Interim-interim injunctions or reliefs are a very short-term stop-gap measure.
