A Federal Court judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Meta, Google and Twitter formed a cartel to block Web 3.0 competitors by imposing blanket restrictions on cryptocurrency advertising that cost the cryptocurrency industry hundreds of thousands of dollars. millions of dollars.
He lawsuit โ filed in August 2020 by Israel-based Australian lawyer Andrew Hamilton through his firm JPB Liberty โ criticized the โalmost absolute powerโ of tech giants Facebook, Google and Twitter, warning that they were โa major threat to the liberty and freedom.โ โ and argued that his 2018 prohibitions of all cryptocurrency announcements "had a devastating effect on all cryptocurrency investors and projects."
At that time, companies blamed bans due to the high incidence of cryptocurrency scams, but the lawsuit alleges that the companies were actually using their market weight to block โadvertising by Web 3.0 competitorsโ in violation of Australian Competition and Consumer Act 2010 provisions that prevent cartels and anti-competitive conduct.
These actions, the lawsuit alleges, caused material damage to holders of 33 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and ZCash, as well as seven other categories of persons related to the provision of cryptocurrency-related goods and services.
looking thousands of millions As for possible sanctions, Hamilton โ a former Telstra lawyer who claims to have โa rare gift for seeing legal strategies that others overlookโ โ mortgaged his house and spent 18 months preparing the case, eventually enrolling around 650 class members in more than 40 countries with a claim value of more than $1 billion.
To fund the ongoing work, he relied on "plaintiff-friendly" Australia, Hamilton explained, because "it is the best jurisdiction to conduct Web 3.0 litigation." [and] financing of large global class actionsโ โ started using the 'social blockchain' operator stem to issue a new cryptocurrency token called SUFB (by Sue Facebook) which promised a portion of any damage payout in exchange for an upfront investment.
The case โhas the potential to generate a big payoff fairly soon with a settlement,โ said Dr. Brian Bishko, vice president of technology and public affairs at JPB Liberty. wrote in 2019 arguing that โthe more money we can raise through crowdfunding and this new SPS methodโThe more power we have to dictate how the case is handled.โ
Nearly 3 million SUFB tokens were eventually issued, of which Hamilton and his family owned around 384,000 tokens and JPB Liberty held 2 million in a complex deal that could have ultimately netted him an estimated $118 million in commission.
However, despite all its ambitions, the case - which momentum achieved in June 2022 and began in February with a first contested hearing speech by Hamilton, who represented himself in the action, was summarily fired by Federal Court Judge Cheeseman, who in a long decision He called Hamilton's arguments โwrong for many reasons.โ
These included questions about whether Hamilton had been paid SUFB tokens for legal work in preparing the case, contrary to accepted practice. ban lawyers be paid in advance by the class members, and whether the case could proceed fairly given that "as the primary token holder, there is a possibility that the interests of JPB Liberty... may diverge and conflict with the of the minority holders".
"Allowing the proceedings to continue would bring the administration of justice into disrepute," Judge Cheeseman wrote, noting problems with Hamilton's "multifaceted interests in the proceedings" and ordering that the proceedings "be permanently stayed."
Walking the thin gold line
The failure of the collective lawsuit that has been promoted for some time โ which comes at the same time as the beginning of the rehearsal of failed FTX founder and former โCrypto Kingโ Sam Bankman-Fried is the latest in a series of high-profile setbacks for the global cryptocurrency industry.
With Australian crypto exchange Swyftx anticipating the industry's "worst case scenario" being Binance Australia fined 2 million dollars for spam as is defendant by US regulators and OneCoin co-founder Karl Sebastian Greenwood now in jail After perpetrating one of the biggest scams in history, government agencies are looking for a way to protect Australians of unscrupulous operators and how the industry could be regulated long-term.
Financial regulators are struggling to bring order to an industry that Fabio Pannetta, a member of the executive board of the European Central Bank, called "a new Wild West" in which "crypto assets are causing instability and insecurity, exactly the opposite of what they promised."
Social media giants have embraced government regulation, with Facebook relaxing its controversial restrictions on crypto advertising in 2019 and again in 2021, when it expanded the number of cryptocurrency licenses it accepts from 3 to 27.
"The cryptocurrency landscape has continued to mature and stabilize in recent years," the company noted, "and has seen more government regulations that are setting clearer rules for its industry."
However, problems with cryptocurrency advertising continue, with the ACCC last year. taking goal to the Federal Court over cryptocurrency advertisements showing images of famous Australians who had never approved of its use.
Current goal regulations Please note that โprior written permissionโ and a โrecognized regulatory license or registrationโ are required for advertisers to promote cryptocurrency trading platforms, related software and services, as well as tools for monetizing, reselling, exchanging or staking. cryptocurrencies.
Australians lost more than $221 million to investment scams in the first eight months of this year alone. according the ACCC's ScamWatch service, where 46 per cent of reported incidents involved financial loss, confirming that these scammers remain successful and prolific.
