“This case will go down in history as one of those cases that nobody saw coming, and it is very important,” said Ishmael Green, a partner at Diaz, Reus & Targ who is not involved in the matter.
What You Need to Know
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Richard Heart over the offer and sale of over $1 billion in unregistered securities.
Both sides filed dueling motions on Thursday spanning over 140 pages.
An uninvolved expert noted the implications of the litigation on the industry at large.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the litigators for an embattled cryptocurrency founder escalated their clash this week over a $1 billion unregistered securities lawsuit before a federal district court in Brooklyn.
Defendant Richard Heart is represented by several law firms, including Am Law 100 firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and its partners Michael Liftik and Kristin Tahler. Heart claimed that the plaintiff, the SEC, “further seeks to cement a role it has assumed for itself as the global governor of blockchain technology—a role exceeding both the limited mandate and the bounds of personal jurisdiction” and the “case should be dismissed with prejudice.”
Within hours of the defendant’s filing, the SEC filed a motion in opposition. Matthew Gulde, a trial attorney who penned the motion for the SEC, pinpointed five points that Heart asserted and doubled down against the notion that the complaint is “deficient in any respect.”
Now, a hearing has been scheduled in October before U.S. District Judge Carol Amon of the Eastern District of New York before she rules on the matter.
Ishmael Green, a partner at Diaz, Reus & Targ in Miami and uninvolved crypto expert, said the ruling and its fallout could impact other digital assets because “Pulsechain is essentially a copy of Ethereum, and Hex is essentially Bitcoin but with a certificate of deposit function.”
