The fight between Tron and the Steem community has taken another twist as the key members of the latter have filed a lawsuit against Bittrex for unexpectedly receiving deposited tokens on the crypto exchange.
First, reported by Decrypt, the lawsuit was filed by Daniel Notestein, Daniel Hensley, and others who are all key members of the original Steem community on May 8 at the US District Court in the Western District of Virginia.
The plaintiffs are seeking $16 million from Bittrex, which received $5 million in disputed Steem tokens but refused to return them to the original owners.
Tron vs Steem
Tron founder and CEO, Justin Sun purchased Steemit Inc. in February and replaced the original blockchain witnesses with new ones. Then he saw a massive backlash from the blockchain social media community.
The new witnesses seized $5 million in Steem tokens from 65 accounts and transferred them to a single account on May 8. However, an unknown person with access to that account transferred the tokens to Bittrex with a note that the tokens should be returned to the original owner.
The crypto exchange, however, refused to return the tokens, resulting in the lawsuit.
Notably, 60 percent of the seized Steem tokens, originally amounted to $3 million, belong to the plaintiffs.
In response to the lawsuit, the crypto exchange refused to return the amount, denying most of the claims, and argued that it is not responsible for the transferred money as it did not seize them.
The exchange also pointed out that the anonymous person responsible for the transfer to the exchange did not provide any information about the ‘original owners’ of the tokens.
The plaintiffs, in a recent response, squashed the arguments of the crypto exchange. Additionally, they want the exchange to create a sub-account for the seized tokens as they are concerned that if the tokens are kept in the pool account, then they are still at the risk of being seized.
(Photo: Steem)
