{"id":82194,"date":"2023-07-26T13:58:09","date_gmt":"2023-07-26T10:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=82194"},"modified":"2025-09-12T03:35:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T00:35:41","slug":"singapore-high-court-recognises-usdt-as-property-in-bybit-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/singapore-high-court-recognises-usdt-as-property-in-bybit-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Singapore High Court recognises USDT as property in Bybit case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Singapore High Court has recognised the stablecoin USDT as property that can be held in trust. This is evidenced by the <a href=\\\"https:\/\/www.elitigation.sg\/gd\/s\/2023_SGHC_199\\\">\u0440\u0435\u0448\u0435\u043d\u0438\u0435<\/a> in the Bybit case dated 25 July.<\/p>\n<p>The trading platform filed a lawsuit against its employee Ho Kay Sin, accusing her of breach of employment contract and abuse of fiduciary duties. She allegedly transferred more than $4.2 million in USDT to personal wallets, as well as an undisclosed amount of fiat to a personal bank account.<\/p>\n<p>During the proceedings Bybit sought a declaration that the aforementioned assets were held in trust by the employee. In turn Ho accused her cousin Jason Theo of theft and claimed that he owned the addresses to which the funds were sent.<\/p>\n<p>After examining the circumstances, the Singapore High Court concluded that Jason \u201cdoes not exist or did not play the role he claimed\u201d and ordered the respondent to return the assets to Bybit.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u00abThe owner of a crypto asset, in principle, has an intangible property right recognised in common law as <span data-descr=\\\"The bundle of personal rights to property that can be asserted or enforced only in court proceedings, and not by physical possession.\\\" class=\\\"old_tooltip\\\">property in claims<\/span> and, thus, enforceable in court\u00bb, the judge&#8217;s verdict said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The ruling also cites public consultations by the Monetary Authority of Singapore from 3 July 2023. The document \u201creflects the reality that, in practice, it is possible to identify and segregate digital assets.\u201d This suggests that cryptocurrencies can be held in trust, the court added.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier in July, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that Ripple&#8217;s software sales and other distributions of the XRP token do not constitute an offer and sale of securities, i.e., <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/ripple-wins-case-against-the-sec-as-xrp-jumps-24-in-an-hour\">the coin is not considered a security<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. regulator CFTC, in its suit against Binance, is considering a number of cryptocurrencies <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/cftc-files-suit-against-binance-and-changpeng-zhao\">as a commodity<\/a>. The platform has already <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/binance-files-motion-to-dismiss-cftc-lawsuit\">filed a motion<\/a> to dismiss this suit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Singapore High Court recognised USDT as property that can be held in trust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":82195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1151,1162,946,1245],"class_list":["post-82194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-bybit","tag-court-cases","tag-singapore","tag-tether-usdt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"20","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82196,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82194\/revisions\/82196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}