The Singapore International Commercial Court recently issued a temporary injunction freezing approximately S$75 million in Bitcoin and USDC in a dispute over the ownership of crypto assets. The case arose after a major digital asset exchange alleged an internal ledger error resulted in 2,500 Bitcoin and 2,500 Bitcoin Cash being mistakenly transferred to a wallet controlled by a long-standing customer.
The court has preliminarily frozen the disputed assets.
According to court documents, the injunction covers approximately 780 bitcoins, 817,000 USDC, and any income, profits, or interest derived from these assets. The court also requires the defendant to disclose the current locations of these assets and any proceeds from their liquidation.
This order is a provisional asset preservation measure that restricts the defendant from disposing of, transferring, or diminishing the value of the relevant assets. The court approved the application following a hearing on March 26 of this year.
The dispute originates from the old wallet records.
The core of the case involves a type of self-custody wallet product launched in earlier years. Court documents show that these wallets required customers to hold their own critical security credentials. The platform ceased support for this product in April 2018, but users were still able to access them for a time using open-source tools.
By March 2020, 2,500 bitcoins and 2,500 bitcoin cash had been withdrawn from the associated wallets, leaving them nearly empty. The platform stated that due to a technical issue, this withdrawal was not properly recorded in its internal ledger, causing the system to continue showing this balance as retained by customers for several years.
The platform then transferred 2,500 BTC and 2,500 BCH to the client’s other accounts in July 2024, based on this ledger record. The platform stated that these assets originated from its consolidated custodial wallet and that the transfer was due solely to an internal system error incorrectly showing the client still had a corresponding balance.
The client previously transferred 780 bitcoins.
Court records show that, after receiving the relevant assets, the defendant transferred portions of the cryptocurrency off the platform. On July 13, 2024, they exchanged 20 BTC for approximately 816,773 USDC and transferred the funds to a non-custodial wallet.
From July 2024 to January 2025, the defendant further transferred 780 bitcoins in batches to multiple external addresses. The platform stated that these subsequent on-chain transfers have made it more difficult to trace the current locations of some of these assets.
After identifying the issue in January 2025, the platform froze 1,700 BTC and all 2,500 BCH remaining in customers’ accounts and recredited these assets back to its own account. For the 780 BTC and approximately 817,000 USDC that had already been withdrawn from the platform, the platform requested their return, but the request was denied.
Both parties clashed over asset ownership.
The platform has asserted multiple claims in the complaint, including unjust enrichment, property rights, fraud or negligent misrepresentation, and breach of the platform’s terms of service, and has requested the court to recognize that the defendant is holding the disputed assets in trust and must return them.
The defendant denied the platform’s claims, asserting that the relevant assets belong to them, and filed a counterclaim demanding the return of assets still frozen on the platform or equivalent compensation. They also argued that the platform’s acknowledgment of errors in its internal ledger undermines its claim of ownership over assets transferred in 2024.
The court found that a material dispute exists.
During the interim stage, the three judges determined that whether the platform holds property rights over the disputed assets constitutes at least a serious issue worthy of examination. Based on this, the court granted a freezing order to prevent the related assets from being further transferred before the formal hearing.
This case also demonstrates that Singaporean courts have been increasingly involved in high-value cryptocurrency disputes in recent years, with growing numbers of cases involving trading platforms, asset recovery, and cross-border preservation measures.