Britain’s Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in a long-running $13 billion lawsuit brought by Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) investors who upheld lower court rulings that narrowed claims against major crypto exchanges over the token’s delisting.
In a brief ruling released on December 8, the court said that BSV Claims Limited’s “application does not raise a question of law or a question of law of general public importance”.
For exchanges like Binance, which asked the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to dismiss the case, and other defendants, the Supreme Court’s rejection represents a significant legal victory and a signal that UK courts are unwilling to guarantee multibillion-dollar crypto claims based on hypothetical market outcomes.
“The result sends a clear signal to the next ‘real Satoshi and real Bitcoin’ who want to test their luck in the courts,” Irina Heaver, a Dubai-based crypto lawyer and founder of NeosLegal, told CoinDesk in an interview. “Repeated litigation cannot replace the market’s acceptance and trust. Courts are not a tool to reverse the decline of reputation or revive controversial projects when the market has already given its verdict.”
The court’s refusal further weakens one of the largest crypto-related lawsuits ever brought in the UK, effectively blocking claims that exchanges can be held liable for speculative future gains allegedly lost after delisting a token, an issue closely watched by the industry amid concerns over exchange liability for listing decisions.
Heaver said the “lost opportunity” theory stretches tort law beyond credibility and effectively asks courts to enforce speculative narratives in crypto, or, in the BSV case, apparently false ones, where claimed losses depend on future adoption, belief and market sentiment rather than demonstrable legal or economic harm.
In a Court of Appeal decision in May this year, the UK Court of Appeal rejected BSV Claims Limited’s challenge to previous rulings, saying that holders of the BSV token who were (or should have been) aware of the delistings in 2019 were required to mitigate their losses by selling in an available market and could not recover speculative “anticipated growth”.
The lawsuit stems from the 2019 delisting of BSV by several exchanges, including Binance, Kraken, Shapeshift and Bittylicious, following controversy surrounding the project and its supporters. Plaintiffs alleged that the exchanges coordinated to remove BSV, violating UK competition law and causing the token’s price to collapse.
“The case confirms what many in the industry already understood: exchanges are not obligated to maintain liquidity or price discovery for assets in which the market no longer has confidence. Delisting is not market abuse,” Heaver said. “Trust, reputation and risk perception are fundamental in the crypto industry, and exchanges are allowed to act to protect their traders and their business.”
BSV Claims Limited did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
