Old School investor Warren Buffet famously said, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” That is, bad economic times will unmask apparently successful firms, revealing that they are actually running on fumes. As a corollary, economic downturns usually bring a spate of fraud lawsuits as dishonest ventures can no longer keep up their façade of profitability. I saw this firsthand, having litigated major investment fraud cases in the wake of the Dot-Com bubble burst of 2001 and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.
Will the recent carnage in crypto markets occasion a surge in fraud lawsuits? Looks like it. Bloomberg Law just reported that “[c]rypto has generated more than 200 class action lawsuits and other private litigation as of this month, up more than 50% since the start of 2020.”
On the international front, South Korean investors are apparently looking to sue Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon for fraud over Terra’s $40 billion collapse. Terra is what is known as a “stablecoin”—a special form of cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady value, thereby making it a better medium of exchange. Some stablecoins claim to be backed by a fiat currency, or a traditional value commodity such as gold. Terra, however, was to be held stable by being algorithmically linked to another coin, Luna. Both Terra and Luna suffered a catastrophic drop in price earlier this month.
Another stablecoin, Tether (USDT), has recently seen its market cap drop by $9 billion amid a wave of redemptions. The coin– which is said to be backed by cash, cash equivalents, and commercial paper—is designed to be pegged to the USD, with each unit redeemable for a dollar. Tether briefly lost its dollar peg last week, but is apparently still able to cover the current demand for redemptions. Investors and regulators, however, have hit Terra with lawsuits in the recent past.
Late last year, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission claimed that “Tether misrepresented to customers and the market that Tether maintained sufficient fiat reserves to back every USDT in circulation ‘one-to-one’ with the ‘equivalent amount of corresponding fiat currency’ held in reserves by Tether…, and that Tether would undergo routine, professional audits to demonstrate that it maintained ‘100% reserves at all times’.” Tether agreed to pay a $41 million civil penalty without admitting or denying any wrongdoing. Private lawsuits often build off government enforcement actions, and one did follow. Last December, two Tether purchasers filed a class action lawsuit against the company, also claiming that its representations that Tether tokens are backed one-to-one by sufficient reserves in U.S. dollars are false. Tether labeled it a “nonsense, copycat lawsuit” and recently requested the court dismiss it.
Last week, two purchasers of the GYEN stablecoin sued its issuer and Coinbase in a class action case filed in Northern California. The suit alleges that while GYEN was marketed as being pegged one-to-one to the Japanese Yen, it actually fluctuated over 200 percent against the U.S. Dollar, while the Yen fluctuated only 7 percent. As a result, GYEN investors allegedly “lost untold millions in a matter of hours.”
Crypto is by no means finished. But more lawsuits will surely be filed in the wake of its biggest meltdown so far.