Court says it lacks jurisdiction over platform sued by alleged victim of $26M crypto scam
The British Columbia Supreme Court has found insufficient connections to BC for it to assume in personam jurisdiction over Binance Holdings Ltd. to grant the production and preservation orders sought by an alleged victim of a cryptocurrency investment scam.
Wang v Binance Holdings Ltd., 2026 BCSC 874, concerned a petition naming cryptocurrency platforms Binance Holdings Ltd. and Coinbase Global, Inc. as respondents. With servers in Japan, Binance had no physical presence in BC.
The petitioner set down the petition for hearing without notice to the respondents. Alleging that unknown individuals supposedly residing in BC stole bitcoin valued at over $26 million from him, the petitioner sought:
- production orders for information on the identities of the account holders who received certain transactions on their platforms
- preservation orders over those account holders’ cryptocurrency and fiat funds
One of the petitioner’s deponents, a Vancouver resident, described how he registered for and used accounts on the respondents’ platforms and how he accessed his Binance account on Feb. 5, 2025, after Binance announced its withdrawal from the Canadian marketplace.
On Feb. 6, 2025, a presiding judge of the BC Supreme Court issued production and preservation orders against the respondent upon seeing sufficient connections to BC to assume in personam jurisdiction over the respondents.
Binance sought to set aside the without-notice orders and to dismiss the underlying petition. Binance argued that the BC court:
- lacked jurisdiction
- made the orders on the mistaken premises that Binance carried on business in BC and that the allegedly stolen cryptocurrency was traceable to Binance accounts
- should order the petitioner to pay special costs
Binance also asserted that the petitioner failed to disclose material facts regarding Binance’s withdrawal from Canada, Binance’s restrictions on Canadian users, and blockchain investigators’ limited ability to trace bitcoin through numerous accounts.
Orders set aside
The Supreme Court of British Columbia dismissed the petition against Binance and set aside the production and preservation orders it previously issued, given the material non-disclosure.
First, the court determined that the petitioner did not misrepresent the facts to the court or provide untruthful evidence. However, the court found that the evidence created an incorrect impression, which the petitioner’s deponent could have avoided with more complete disclosure.
The court found that Binance implemented procedures in June 2023 to block Canadian users from opening new accounts and restricted all existing Canadian accounts to transactions associated with withdrawing assets by activating “liquidation-only” mode in September 2023.
The presiding judge recognized that he previously incorrectly stated that the apps allowed BC users to create accounts, deposit funds, and trade bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the platforms.
The court acknowledged the material non-disclosure of facts that might have changed the results of its jurisdictional analysis and the hearing outcome. However, given the innocent nature of the non-disclosure, the court exercised its discretion to consider the orders’ merits.
Next, the court refused to continue the production and preservation orders or make new orders upon finding that it lacked jurisdiction to issue such orders.
The court accepted that Binance permitted resident legacy account holders, such as the petitioner’s deponent, to maintain a balance in their existing accounts and facilitated their transactions for the sole purpose of recovering their funds.
However, the court explained that Binance barred British Columbians from accessing the core aspects of its business, including opening accounts, depositing funds, or trading cryptocurrency. The court added that Binance did not sell advertising in BC or collect data from BC.
The court noted that anybody who reviewed Binance’s terms of use or tried to trade anything above a nominal amount of cryptocurrency would know these restrictions on Canadian users.
Lastly, the court awarded Binance the application costs on the normal tariffs because the petitioner:
- did not allege wrongdoing against Binance
- did not misstate the facts
- did not mean to mislead the court
- sought in good faith to obtain information to prosecute a claim against the unknown fraudsters who supposedly stole millions of dollars from him
