KRAKEN: WE’LL SEE YOU IN… ARBITRATION
October 31, 2017 | Back to News
In July 2017, Silver Miller — along with the Wites Law Firm — commenced a class action lawsuit against cryptocurrency exchange Payward, Inc. d/b/a Kraken (“Kraken”) in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida on behalf of a group of aggrieved Kraken accountholders. The claimants — each of whom maintained margin accounts at Kraken in which they held Ether, among other digital assets — lost significant sums of money in a May 7, 2017 “flash crash” that saw Kraken’s Ether market plummet nearly 75% in value . . . only to see the value restored to nearly its full value an hour later. During the one-hour crash, however, Kraken forcibly liquidated the claimants’ margin accounts without affording them any opportunity to meet a margin call or even log-in to their accounts, as Kraken’s software systems were inaccessible to the victims during the critical hour in which their accounts got liquidated.
Relying on a set of “take it or leave it” Terms of Service, Kraken insisted to the federal court that the victims not be allowed to pursue their claims in the public forum provided by the court and that the victims’ dispute instead be handled in a private arbitration forum chosen by Kraken. Without waiving any of their substantive arguments, the claimants have agreed to shift to the arbitration forum their pursuit for justice, where they have been joined by nearly two dozen other victims of Kraken’s flawed security and faulty software systems. While Kraken advertises itself as being the “best Bitcoin exchange” and providing “sound and reliable” access and support every hour of every day of the year, the arbitration Statement of Claim alleges that Kraken’s services are not nearly as sound or reliable as advertised, are not available when needed most, and purportedly can be withdrawn by Kraken at any time without any notice whatsoever to the account holders who serve as the lifeblood of Kraken’s business. Moreover, the Statement of Claim demonstrates that whenever anything goes wrong at Kraken, Kraken takes no responsibility for those wrongs and instead puts the blame on its accountholders for trusting Kraken to provide the very services and security that Kraken promotes.
Kraken is expected to provide its formal response to the Statement of Claim sometime in November 2017, though that response will likely be shielded from public view. Kraken’s Terms of Service purport to require that the arbitration hearing is a confidential proceeding conducted by a single arbitrator, not a jury of the victims’ peers. So, unlike a court case — where any member of the public can come to court and watch the jury trial and other court proceedings — Kraken’s Terms of Service seek to keep Kraken’s other customers, the government, and everyone else in world in the dark about what will actually happen when the trial of this matter occurs in the forum mandated by Kraken.
Silver Miller currently represents the victims in lawsuits against multiple cryptocurrency exchanges (Cryptsy and Kraken). If you have lost money at a cryptocurrency exchange or are concerned that the services advertised to get you to open an account were not matched by the services actually provided to you as an accountholder, contact Silver Miller contact us for a no-cost, no-obligation consultation to discuss your legal rights.
See the Statement of Claim:
Confidential v. Kraken
