The Singapore International Commercial Court froze S$75 million in bitcoin and USD Coin this March largely because of what a customer didn’t do: tell the platform he’d just received a fortune by mistake.
A panel of three judges said the customer’s own conduct was itself evidence he knew something was wrong. He’d been quietly checking his account balances and trying to access the funds, the court found, “without contacting the Platform Group’s executives.”
That combination of behavior, the judges wrote, was “consistent with an awareness that the Platform Group were mistaken and a conscious attempt to take advantage of that mistake while staying below the radar.”
How a Wallet Feature Retired in 2018 Set Up a $75 Million Mistake
The customer, referred to in the judgment as DVC, had used the platform since roughly 2013. He once held 2,500 bitcoin and 2,500 Bitcoin Cash in a type of specialized wallet the platform stopped supporting in April 2018.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| ~2013 | DVC becomes a customer of the platform |
| April 2018 | Platform discontinues the specialized wallet type DVC used |
| March 2020 | DVC withdraws 2,500 BTC and 2,500 BCH from those wallets; the platform’s ledger fails to record it |
| July 2024 | Platform’s automated “remediation tool” mistakenly re-credits 2,500 BTC and 2,500 BCH to DVC’s active wallets |
| July-Nov 2024 | DVC converts 20 BTC to 816,773 USDC and withdraws 780 BTC to outside wallets |
| January 2025 | Platform discovers the ledger error, freezes DVC’s remaining balances, recovers 1,700 BTC and 2,500 BCH |
| November 2025 | Platform files suit against DVC |
| 25-26 March 2026 | SICC hears the case and grants an interim proprietary injunction |
| 24 April 2026 | Court publishes its full written grounds of decision |
The Remediation Tool That Refilled an Empty Wallet
In July 2024, the platform ran that automated tool to fix account discrepancies. Working off its faulty ledger, it credited 2,500 bitcoin and 2,500 Bitcoin Cash into DVC’s active wallets, assets the platform believed it still owed him.
DVC then moved. Between July and November 2024, he converted 20 bitcoin into 816,773 USD Coin and sent it to an outside wallet, then withdrew 780 bitcoin in a series of transactions to other wallets.
The platform didn’t discover its own mistake until January 2025, by which point it recovered what DVC hadn’t already moved:
| Amount | Details |
|---|---|
| Mistakenly credited to DVC (July 2024) | 2,500 BTC + 2,500 BCH |
| Recovered by the platform (Jan 2025) | 1,700 BTC + 2,500 BCH |
| Already moved by DVC before discovery | 780 BTC, plus 20 BTC converted to 816,773 USDC |
| Frozen by the court (Mar 2026) | 780.0000542 BTC + 816,773.840272 USDC |
What the Court Found Suspicious About His Silence
The platform sued in November 2025, roughly ten months after finding the error, and asked for an interim proprietary injunction, a pre-trial order freezing specific assets so they can’t be moved or spent while the case is decided.
To get one, it had to show an arguable case,. The judges said it cleared that bar. They found “strong evidence” the specialized wallets were empty in July 2024, and that the platform’s transfer that month happened only because it wrongly believed otherwise.
The harder question was whether DVC knew that. The court pointed to his own conduct, checking balances tied to those old wallets and trying to draw on them without ever flagging the sudden, unexplained windfall. On Singapore law, the judges said, it’s “well arguable” that if DVC knew the assets came from a mistake, he held them on a constructive trust, meaning the law would treat him as holding the coins for the platform’s benefit, not his own, even though they sat in his wallet.
Why Fungible Crypto Beat the “Just Pay Damages” Argument
DVC argued the platform didn’t need a freeze, if it won at trial, it could just collect damages. The court disagreed for three reasons: the assets were being actively spent, including on legal costs; DVC had “declined to provide any up-to-date evidence about his financial position,” with evidence suggesting he lacked liquid assets to cover a large judgment; and the frozen amount was precise and traceable.
The court also ordered DVC to disclose, within 14 days, where the frozen assets are and how to access them, but stopped short of letting the platform use that disclosure to chase his assets in other countries’ courts, saying it would consider that separately if asked.
For now, a customer of more than a decade is locked out of S$75 million because three judges believed his silence spoke for him.
Singapore’s court has found Terraform Labs and Do Kwon liable for fraud tied to the collapse of TerraUSD, with damages awarded to affected investors. The ruling adds to the legal fallout from the 2022 TerraUSD collapse and strengthens the case for investor compensation.
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