Nano developers face class-action lawsuit

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At least one law firm has found a niche market stemming from the rise in cryptocurrencies. The Silver Miller law firm is staying busy filing lawsuits against several entities involved in the cryptocurrency business, including Coinbase, BitConnect, Cryptsy and Kraken. It is also pursuing legal action against Initial Coin Offering (ICO) promoters Tezos, Giga Watt and Monkey Capital. Not having enough on its plate, apparently, the law firm is now going after cryptocurrency Nano.

A lawsuit has been filed by the firm on behalf of Alex Brola, an investor who sunk $50,000 into the digital currency in 2017. When the BitGrail exchange was hacked at the beginning of February, around $187 million worth of Nano (17 million coins) went missing, including Brola’s investment. Silver Miller is suing to have the altcoin conduct a hard fork that could “reset” the digital currency’s amount to where it was prior to the theft.

The fallout from the theft has attracted a lot of legal attention. There have been disputes over who was at fault, and it was reported that BitGrail’s owner and operator, Francesco Firano, tried to convince Nano developers to alter ledgers to help him cover his losses. The developers fought back, accusing Firano of misleading the Nano Core Team, as well as the entire community.

Silver Miller’s suit claims that there are hundreds or maybe thousands of investors that suffered because of the hack. To date, however, Brola is the only plaintiff listed on the suit. The firm asserts in the suit that it is a ““strong advocate for aggrieved investors harmed by the misrepresentations and illegal actions of cryptocurrency exchanges and issuers.”

The BitGrail hack came soon after the Coincheck hack of approximately $530 million in January. The Japanese exchange was at one point considered to be behind the theft. The publicity surrounding the hack brought wide-sweeping changes to cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan, and the company agreed to reimburse its clients at a rate of $0.81 per token, or a total of around $420 million. Coincheck never fully recovered from the scandal, and is scheduled to be acquired by online securities brokerage firm Monex Group on April 16.