Coinbase and Craig Wright are going to court?

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In his latest blog post, “About Coinbase,” Dr. Craig Wright alludes to the trouble on the horizon for Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN).

What trouble?

Coinbase is currently the defendant in a class-action lawsuit, in which lead plaintiff Thomas Sandoval is claiming that the cryptocurrency exchange violated California’s unfair competition laws when they profited from the sale of XRP even though they knew that XRP was an unregistered security.

Coinbase is currently facing several lawsuits. One of the lawsuits involves XRP and Ripple. Coinbase will likely argue that they had no idea. Which would be a lie. Several years ago, senior executives of Coinbase visited nChain’s offices in London. In discussing XRP, I was told that it was ‘crypto’, so it wouldn’t be a security. Basically, the executives at Coinbase did not care.

According to Dr. Wright, the team at nChain personally had a discussion with Coinbase regarding the nature of XRP, but they were negligent because if they did not support XRP, it would have significantly cut into their bottom line—which is really all that the team at Coinbase cares about. Their business model has nothing to do with the philosophy or blueprint of Bitcoin, but instead, relies on gamblers—I mean traders—to bolster their revenue.

“Their aim lies not in creating a system that acts as digital currency or digital cash, but instead in creating an online casino, where only the casino wins,” said Dr. Wright. “Bitcoin was designed as a digital cash system. Yet, Coinbase and others have created an online casino, one where people gamble money and call it an investment.”

What will happen next?

Coinbase will inevitably have to battle the case in court. From the looks of it, there seems to be evidence that supports the plaintiff’s claims against Coinbase—and one piece of that evidence might even be Dr. Wright himself.

“Coinbase is portrayed as an organisation of regulatory compliance, which presents a deception. Coinbase always knew that XRP was a security; they simply sought to deceive the regulators,” says Dr. Wright. 

“I am more than happy to wait, to see the executives of Coinbase weasel and lie their way into telling everybody that they had no idea and that they don’t believe it. When they do, I’ll be there, ready to provide evidence to the contrary. When the executives of Coinbase attempt to give evidence showing that they had no idea that XRP was a controlled security, I will happily demonstrate their perjury and show how they intentionally overlooked the issue, amongst many others.”

You can learn more about Coinbase’s meeting with nChain as well as their negligence toward XRP, USDT, BTC, and BCH in Dr. Wright’s latest blog post “About Coinbase.”

Follow CoinGeek’s Crypto Crime Cartel series, which delves into the stream of groups—from BitMEX to Binance, Bitcoin.com, Blockstream, ShapeShift, Coinbase, Ripple and Ethereum—who have co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned the industry into a minefield for naïve (and even experienced) players in the market.