UK court allows lawsuit to be filed via NFT airdrop

The High Court of England and Wales has approved the filing of a lawsuit against anonymous people through an NFT airdrop, according to UK law firm Giambrone & Partners LLP’s notice released on Tuesday. This move is significant as scams, phishing attacks can often only be tied to wallet addresses and for victims of such attacks to sue anonymous cybercriminals. 

The case in question involves founder of Italy-based online gambling company Microgame Fabrizio D’Aloia against Binance Holdings, Poloniex, gate.io, OKX, and Bitkub over allegations someone has lured D’Aloia into depositing around US$ 2.1 million USDT and 230,000 USDC into two fraudulent wallets. 

The UK court said it allows D’Aloia to sue the cryptocurrency exchanges responsible for holding his crypto assets by sending the court documents via an NFT drop to the two wallets originally used by D’Aloia but stolen by anonymous persons. 

Binance, Poloniex, Gate.io, OKX and Bitkub have been identified by D’Aloia as the cryptocurrency exchanges holding his crypto assets. The court has ruled the exchanges are to be held responsible for ensuring stolen assets are not moved or withdrawn from their platforms.  

In June this year, the New York Court became the first to green-light legal documents serving as NFTs. The case concerns a hack which saw US$ 8 million stolen from Liechtenstein-based cryptocurrency exchange LCX. Law firms Holland & Knight and Bluestone served the defendant with a temporary restraining order via NFTs. 
The use of NFTs to facilitate legal proceedings is another milestone for the NFT industry and presents a new use case for the growing technology. 

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