TL;DR: In the United States District Court Southern District of Florida, US Magistrate Judge Chris McAliley ruled to dismiss the case filed by United American Corp (UAC) against parties the company considered to be Bitcoin Cash (BCH) proponents (such as Bitmain, Kraken, Bitcoin.com, and even software developers) responsible for the contentious hard fork and eventual split during a scheduled upgrade back in November of 2018.

Court Grants Motion to Dismiss in Bitcoin Cash Lawsuit

United American Corp. v. Bitmain, Inc. (1:18-cv-25106) was filed only weeks after the BCH chain split in late 2018. Since, those then disaffected with the peer-to-peer electronic cash community have formed their own project. During that time, little known UAC suddenly and out of nowhere claimed Bitcoin Cash had been “hijacked,” and accused mining giant Bitmain, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, and portal Bitcoin.com of being at the takeover’s center. That, and UAC named developers from BCH reference implementation Bitcoin ABC as complicit as well.

More than 130 motions and nearly 14 months later, UAC’s first filing, the case on which the other 134 subsequent motions rest, has been dismissed. In late February of last year, the presiding judge, Honorable Kathleen M. Williams, referred all pretrial matters to US Magistrate Judge Chris McAliley. It was McAliley’s decision to dismiss.

For an open-source project comprised of autonomous and freely associating individuals and companies, the UAC lawsuit and resulting media campaign it launched in support bordered on the bizarre. Again, hardly anyone had ever heard of UAC prior, and it appeared to be something of a shadow company in almost name-only. In fact, UAC “has been around since the early 1990s in one capacity or another,” CoinSpice revealed at the time, “and its latest earnings show it generated quarterly revenue of $362,885 from BlockchainDome for hosting, management and power over a 5 month period of operation with a gross profit of $278,448. Its quarterly net earnings were only $52,293. Cash at this latest quarter was a mere $132,343. Assets include 2,500 miners in service as of September 30, 2018 and 5,000 as of November 13, 2018. This appears to be a very ambitious lawsuit for a rather small company.”

A dedicated anti-BCH website was launched, complete with strange, amateurish graphics mislabeling alleged conspirators. There was also a countdown clock with mug-shot like pictures of the ecosystem’s higher-profile names such as Jihan Wu of Bitmain, Jesse Powell of Kraken, and Amaury Séchet of Bitcoin ABC, noting whether each had been legally served. As for the status of the case in early 2020, the recent verdict appears to not be definitive, as UAC has until the end of February to amend the original complaint filed back in early December of 2018.

CONTINUE THE SPICE and check out our piping hot VIDEOS. Our podcast, The CoinSpice Podcast, has amazing guests. Follow CoinSpice on Twitter. Join our Telegram feed to make sure you never miss a post. Drop some BCH at the merch shop — we’ve got some spicy shirts for men and women. Don’t forget to help spread the word about CoinSpice on social media.

DYOR: CoinSpice is your home for just spicy crypto things. We’re not affiliated with any cryptocurrency project or token. Each published piece is intended for information purposes only, not investment advice and not in the hope of impacting speculative markets. There are plenty of trading sites and coin-specific advocacy journals out there, we’re neither. CoinSpice strives for rigorous accuracy in our reporting. Information presented here is contingent usually on a host of factors, and the ecosystem moves fast — prices change, projects change, and at warp speed. Do your own research.

DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.