Do you recall back in January 2018 when the tech giants - Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc - banned all advertising for anything remotely connected to cryptocurrencies?
An enterprising law firm in Australia certainly remember those events and are organising a class action to obtain compensation for crypto projects and investors who suffered financially as a result of the advertising ban.
As reported in the UK's Daily Mail, a number of litigants have already signed up for the no win/no fee court action and their claims currently exceed USD$600 million. This amount is speculated to explode to hundreds of billions of dollars as more claimants join the cause.
Cartel of Power
JPB Liberty are the law firm organising the claim and they are clear that the advertising ban was indiscriminate and in breach of the Australian Competition and Consumer Law so they are seeking "...damages for worldwide losses of Crypto Industry members and investors."
The lawyers believe by banning advertisements on their platforms, the tech giants "...dropped Crypto markets by hundreds of billions of dollars. Crypto exchanges also dropped 60-90%."
What is more, they suggest these major players operated as a cartel and misused their market power in a "...concerted practice that has the purpose and/or likely effect of substantially lessing competition..."
Who Can Claim?
According to the lawyers website, anyone worldwide who was adversely affected by the Crypto Ad Ban announcements can claim. They suggest these people should consider joining the class action:
- Persons holding cryptocurrency in the period 29 January 2018 until 31 December 2018 (or later in limited cases)
- Persons holding a Steem or Hive cryptocurrency on chain wallet at any time
- Mt Gox Creditors
- Owners of Crypto Industry businesses including Crypto Exchanges?, Crypto Wallet Providers, Crypto Projects (pre and post ICO), Crypto Miners, and Crypto Advisories.
The action is being undertaken on a No-win No-fee basis, which means there will be no legal costs to pay of the case is unsuccessful.
Legally, it does mean that anyone joining the class action will give up their right to sue the tech giants separately on their own.
Law Firm
The General Counsel leading the claim at JPB Liberty is Andrew Hamilton whose profile states his legal record includes "winning two underdog vs the system cases in the High Court of Australia" and confirms he has "Extensive Crypto involvement as an investor, GPU miner and user of decentralised applications."
Case Funding
Any proceeds gained from winning the case will be split in a 70/25/5% basis and will be paid in the form of A$, US$ or cryptocurrency.
Image: JPB Liberty
You will see that 25% of funding is allocated to token holders - uniquely, the lawyers have launched a token sale to fund the case. Anyone outside of US investors are eligible for the token sale.
The first token for the Crypto Ad Ban Case is the "Sue Facebook" Token (SUFB) which is a Hive Engine token on the Hive blockchain and is tradable on the Hive Engine Decentralised Exchange.
Tokens can be purchased in small amounts and are priced at $0.25 per SUFB. A maximum of 8 million tokens appear to be eligible although a sale of a smaller percentage of that allows for the case to proceed in increment levels.
JPB Liberty state plainly that, "This is a high risk, high return investment. There is a risk of total loss of investment."
They go on to say, "While there are many uncertainties and risks, the basic proposition is this:
Cost of Class Action = Size of Token Sale = A$1 - $10 million
Total potential damages claim in Class Action: A$100 million - $300 billion
Percentage of above payable to token holders on success: dependent on terms of Funding Agreement and the total claim value of class members who have signed Funding Agreement
Thus the ratio between investment and potential return is high to very high."
Due Diligence
As always, you are recommended to do your own research into the topic before committing your hard earned cash... but I am curious, how many of you would consider either joining the class action or buying tokens to fund the case?
