A California court has sided with Coinbase, permitting the exchange to proceed with its plan to delist Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) amid an ongoing legal dispute with BiT Global. The court’s decision came after BiT Global, a Hong Kong-based company linked to cryptocurrency entrepreneur and Tron founder Justin Sun, sought a restraining order to prevent the delisting. BiT Global argued that the move would cause “irreparable” harm to its business.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ruled that the delisting could go ahead as planned, stating that “self-inflicted wounds are not irreparable injury.” The judge suggested that the harm BiT Global claimed to suffer was a result of its own actions, not Coinbase’s decision.
On November 19, Coinbase announced it would delist wBTC from its platform on December 19 as part of its regular token review process. BiT Global alleged that Coinbase’s decision was biased and filed a lawsuit accusing the exchange of violating competition laws and libel. The lawsuit claimed that Coinbase harmed wBTC’s reputation while promoting its own tokenized Bitcoin product, cbBTC. Coinbase’s legal team dismissed the lawsuit as frivolous and threatened sanctions, noting that BiT Global failed to provide evidence supporting claims that users had abandoned wBTC due to Coinbase’s actions.
Coinbase, as a private company, defended its right to decide which tokens to list or delist. A spokesperson for the exchange rejected accusations of monopolistic behavior, asserting that Coinbase represented less than one percent of all wBTC trading activity. Since its launch in September, cbBTC has gained significant traction, with a market cap exceeding $2.11 billion.
BiT Global also argued that Justin Sun’s involvement in the matter had been misrepresented. Coinbase countered by referencing previous accusations of financial misconduct against Sun, suggesting that his distancing from wBTC was a strategic move. BiT Global defended the importance of wBTC to the broader crypto ecosystem and criticized Coinbase for what it described as biased listing policies. The company pointed to the listing of meme coins like Mogcoin and Pepe as evidence of Coinbase’s inconsistent token evaluation standards.
