Appeal Court rules out breach of trust claims against crypto platform Quoine

It reversed erroneous trades that it made in a trading software in 2017.

Crypto exchange platform Quoine has announced that the Singapore Court of Appeal ruled that the firm was not in breach of trust in relation to its reversal of erroneous trades placed by algorithmic trading software firm B2C2 on the exchange in April 2017, according to a statement. 

However, they also expressed disappointment as the Court did not fully accept their arguments that the breach never occurred.

“The appeal court upheld the decision of the lower court that Quoine was in breach of contract for its reversal of automated algorithmic trades placed by B2C2 where a system error on Quoine’s exchange platform allowed B2C2 to enter into Bitcoin / Ethereum trades at a price of 10 Bitcoin for 1 Ethereum, prices which were some 250X away from the then current market on that day,” Quoine said in a statement.

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In April 2017, the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC) ruled that Quoine had mistakenly reversed seven trades made by B2C2, saying they are liable or breach of contract and breach of trust.

This marked as Singapore’s first bitcoin-related dispute. Quoine contended that “irreversible”, properly interpreted, does not preclude Quoine, as opposed to the contracting parties, from reversing trades. It also cited a glitch that disabled the programme from accessing ETH and BTC market price data and stopped it from creating new orders, which in turn caused liquidity issues and problems with B2C2's orders.

The SICC has sided with B2C2 but refused to order Quoine to transfer BTC to B2C2 at the current price, which is higher than the price in April 2017.

B2C2 will be left to a claim in damages for both breaches of contract and of trust which, if not agreed upon, will be assessed at another hearing. "The parties should liaise in drafting an appropriate order which will be settled at a subsequent hearing," SICC added.