The court drama surrounding the acquisition of the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb has been ongoing for several years.
A Singapore court has issued a decision against Kim Byung-gun, who had initially accused Lee Jung-hoon, the owner of Bithumb, of defrauding him.
A court in Singapore found Kim guilty of selling BXA coins without the consent of his partner Lee on August 26 after three years of proceedings, according to the South Korean publication Aju Daily. The court also ordered Kim to return the money he made from the sale of the coins to the Singapore-based consortium BTHMB.
The outcome of this civil lawsuit could have an impact on the South Korean trial court. In one instance, Kim charged Lee with cheating him throughout the course of a jointly planned Bithumb transaction.
According to his account, in October 2018, Kim Byung-gun, the founder of a series of cosmetic surgery clinics, and Lee Jung-hoon discussed the acquisition and joint management of the Korean exchange. Partners set up the BTHMB consortium to purchase a 50% share in Bithumb Holdings; according to Lee, Kim gave him $100 million as a “contract fee” up front. However, the remaining funds required to complete the deal should have come from the sale of BXA coins that BTHMB had issued.
The coin was never listed, however, and despite the consortium’s failure to pay the remaining payment, Bithumb was not taken over by it. In 2020, Kim complained about Lee to a Korean court. But even before that, in 2019, Lee claimed in a Singaporean court that his ex-partner had sold BXA tokens on his behalf.
While everything is going on, Bithumb blithely carries on with business as usual; in January 2022, it announced plans to create a nonfungible token exchange that would help it compete with Korbit and Upbit, two other domestic Korean exchanges. The present owner of Bithumb, the Koren business Vidente, disclosed in July that it had gotten in touch with FTX about the possibility of selling its interest.
