Bittrex Sued for $16 Million by Steem Community

The ongoing tussle between the communities of crypto project Tron and Steem has only gained more momentum this week. The Steem community has now filed a lawsuit against crypto exchange Bittrex for $16 million.

What is the case?

The lawsuit was filed by Daniel Hensley, Daniel Notestein, and other key members of the Steem community in the US District Court for the Western District of Virginia on May 8. Bittrex received $5 million in unexpectedly deposited tokens which it refused to send back to the original owners. The Steem community now seeks $16 million from the exchange.

Note that Steemit Inc. was bought by Tron founder and CEO Justin Sun in February this year. He then replaced the original blockchain witnesses with new, because of which the blockchain social media created a huge uproar. The new witnesses by Sun acquired $5 million in Steem tokens from 65 different accounts and transferred them all into a single account on May 8 this year. An unknown person who had access to that account transferred all the tokens to Bittrex. The person also left a note that tokens should be returned to their original owners.

The crypto exchange refused to return the tokens to the original owners because of which the lawsuit followed.

How did the lawsuit proceed?

About 60% of the stack of seized Steem tokens belong to the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and amounted to about $3 million. The crypto exchange denied all the claims and said that it would not refund the amount. It also said that it is not responsible for the money transferred since it did not seize them from the users. The exchange also suggests that the unknown person who made the transfer to the Bittrex account did not provide any specific information about who the “original owners” of the token were.

The plaintiffs recently submitted a response, rubbishing the claims by the exchange. They also sought the creation of a sub-account for the seized tokens.