The Singapore Court of Appeal found the actions of Quoine illegal. The exchange platform canceled seven trades worth $12 mln executed at an overrated price as a result of a technical malfunction.
Quoine, the parent company of the Japanese trading platform Liquid, did not find support in the Singapore Court of Appeals, which rejected Quoine's argument. In April 2017, one of the Quoine's B2C2 clients placed seven orders for selling ETH on the platform at the rate of 10 bitcoins each, which was 250 times higher than the average market price of ether at that time (0.04 bitcoin). Somehow the orders were fulfilled, and 309 ETH were sold for 3092 BTC ($12 million at that time). A day later, Quoine discovered abnormal transactions and canceled them, returning ethers to the client. He appealed to the court.
Almost immediately, the courts of various instances took the client's side. The International Commercial Court of Singapore ruled in March 2019 that the Quoine exchange is responsible for breach of contract and trust in canceling transactions. The exchange claims that the orders were fulfilled due to a technical error and that the client was aware that his orders were overpriced.
The arguments of the cryptocurrency exchange did not convince the Singapore Court of Appeals, and four of the five judges presiding in the appeal commission rejected the cryptocurrency exchange’s argument, noting that there were no errors in trading contracts, and if the transaction had occurred due to a technical error, then the developers of the software are responsible for it.
The Court of Appeal ruled that virtual currency exchange operator Quoine must pay damages for wrongfully reversing seven trades on its platform.