The Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC) has issued an order freezing digital assets worth more than S$75 million, following a global dispute that arose after a major cryptocurrency trading platform mistakenly transferred coins to a large client. The case exposes serious vulnerabilities in internal accounting systems that led to enormous losses, while also setting a new legal precedent for tracing digital asset trails across borders.
The judgment was handed down by Singapore High Court Judge Aidan Xu, together with international judges Anthony Meagher and David Goddard, in March 2026. The court issued an interim injunction prohibiting the defendant from transacting with 816,773 USDC and 780 Bitcoin. The court also ordered the defendant to disclose the transfer trail of assets that had been moved out of the system. However, the court declined to permit the plaintiff to use this trail information to file asset-freezing applications in the jurisdictions of other countries.
The origins of the dispute date back to March 2020, when the platform's internal accounting system failed to record transaction data relating to the withdrawal of assets from the defendant's wallet. This technical error caused the system to not update the account balance, even though the platform had ceased supporting that type of wallet since 2018.
As a result of the misunderstanding arising from the system failure, the platform proceeded to transfer 2,500 Bitcoin and 2,500 BCH into another of the defendant's wallets in July 2024. After receiving the assets, the defendant sold 20 Bitcoin and converted them into approximately 816,773 USDC, then moved all the assets — including the remaining 780 Bitcoin — out to external digital wallets not custodied by the platform, between July and November of the same year.
The truth came to light in January 2025, when the plaintiff's team detected discrepancies in ledger balances and immediately suspended the defendant's wallet access. As a result of this swift action, the platform was able to freeze and recover the remaining 1,700 Bitcoin and 2,500 BCH. After examining the evidence, the court clearly established that the actual balance in the defendant's dedicated wallet was zero, and that the new round of asset transfers was entirely the result of a system data error.
A key point of note from the judgment in case number 2026 SGHC(I) 4 is the court's finding that there is a prima facie basis to believe the defendant may have been aware of the error as early as July 2024, when the plaintiff attempted to make contact. The case highlights a major challenge facing digital asset exchanges in managing operational risk — where a single back-end system failure can open the door to the movement of tens of millions of dollars' worth of assets. It also reinforces Singapore's standing as a financial hub ready to decisively set international precedents for resolving cryptocurrency disputes.
