Tory grandees behind £10bn crypto claim against exchanges including Binance

TORY grandees are behind a £10bn legal claim against cryptocurrency companies including Binance, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal, in a case alleging exchanges unfairly left thousands of British investors out of pocket.

Former lord chancellor Sir Robert Buckland has provided legal advice to BSV Claims, which is bringing a complaint at the Competition Appeal Tribunal against four cryptocurrency exchanges.

Lord Tyrie, the former chair of the Competition and Markets Authority and a Tory peer, is also providing advice to the claimants, according to parliamentary disclosures.

The class action case has been brought by Lord Currie of Marylebone, a crossbench peer who has also chaired the competition watchdog.

The claim represents 240,000 British owners of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin Satoshi Vision who lost money after its price crashed.

Claimants allege they lost £10bn due to the actions of digital coin exchanges Binance, Kraken, Bittylicious and Shapeshift. According to legal filings, in 2019 the cryptocurrency exchanges decided to remove listings of a cryptocurrency, which lawyers argue was an anti-competitive move that crashed the token’s price. At one stage, the coins were worth more than $400 (£300), but they are now priced at just $40.

The competition claim alleges the delisting across the exchanges was “collusive” and “part of an anticompetitive agreement”.

Binance and Kraken declined to comment. Bittylicious and Shapeshift did not respond to requests for comment.

Sir Robert received £6,750 for 27 hours work up to July, when he rejoined the Government as a minister. He has since resigned as a director of BSV Claims. The Government’s advisory committee on business appointments did not raise any issues with the move.

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision was launched by Craig Wright, who claims to be the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto. He is not a party to the case.

Mr Wright, 52, announced he was the secretive creator of Bitcoin in 2015.

However, this was met with scepticism from some in the cryptocurrency community.