New court documents show BiT Global, a custodian of Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), is suing Coinbase after the top US crypto exchange delisted wBTC in November.
In a new complaint, BiT Global states accuses Coinbase uses wBTC – the tokenized representation of Bitcoin (BTC) on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain – as a “cash grab” before eventually delisting it and replacing it with its own version of the asset.
“In the case of wrapped Bitcoin, Coinbase viewed it as just another cash grab. It saw a competitor, wBTC, that had something it wanted: an innovative product that unlocked value inherent in Bitcoin and let users use that value in bold new ways…
Coinbase decided it would take what it wanted. Once the value of wBTC was demonstrated, Coinbase changed the rules and removed wBTC from its platform so that it could no longer be traded on the Coinbase platform – and that happened shortly after the launch of its own counterfeit clone called cbBTC.”
According to BiT Global, similar actions were taken against competitors years ago by technology giants such as Microsoft, Google and Facebook. BiT Global further says that Coinbase’s actions violated US trade laws as they were an attempt to monopolize the market and deliberately debase wBTC.
“Coinbase engaged in predatory or anti-competitive behavior to achieve this [its] monopolization.
It has used its dominant power in one market – the market for centralized cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States – to try to exclude wBTC from that market. It has made false statements about the reasons for its delisting (with implications that the delisting was based on an in-depth evaluation of wBTC using neutral standards, and implications that Coinbase has damaging information about wBTC that caused the delisting).
These activities have created ‘FUD’ (fear, uncertainty and doubt) around wBTC and were part of a deliberate strategy to do so.”
On November 20, Coinbase announced that this would happen after the most recent review suspend trading for WBTC on December 19.
Coinbase first announced Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC) earlier this year – its own wrapped version of the crypto king.
wBTC is trading at $101,122 at the time of writing, up 1.7% over the past 24 hours.
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Generated image: Midjourney