Coinbase Sued Over $55M DAI Freeze; Saylor Eyes BTC Sale

A lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco seeks return of DAI stablecoins a Puerto Rico-based plaintiff says are tied to a $55 million phishing theft in August 2024. The complaint alleges the attacker used a malicious link to obtain a fraudulent DeFi Saver login, authorized transfers and moved funds through the crypto mixer Tornado Cash before depositing some traceable funds into a Coinbase retail user account, where the assets remain frozen.

The filing asks the court to declare the plaintiff the rightful owner of the frozen assets and to order Coinbase to return them. An unnamed John Doe defendant is listed as the alleged perpetrator.

According to the complaint, Coinbase has acknowledged holding the traced funds but has informed the claimant it will not release the assets without a court order adjudicating ownership. The document notes exchanges often freeze assets flagged as stolen after blockchain-monitoring alerts and typically require judicial action before returning funds to claimants.

Strategy reported a $12.5 billion net loss for the first quarter, driven mainly by unrealized losses on its Bitcoin holdings after a 23.8% decline in BTC during the period. On the company’s earnings call, executive chairman Michael Saylor said the firm could sell some Bitcoin to fund a dividend and ‘inoculate the market.’ He added that ‘the company’s fine, the Bitcoin’s fine, the industry’s fine, the world didn’t come to an end.’

Saylor reiterated that Strategy has purchased Bitcoin consistently since August 2020 and said the company could cover its debt obligations even if Bitcoin fell to $8,000.

At the Consensus conference in Miami, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse warned that recent progress on the CLARITY Act does not ensure passage and that the bill’s prospects would ‘drop precipitously’ if the Senate does not address it within two weeks. He described the legislation as imperfect but said it would provide more regulatory clarity than the current framework and cited the primary calendar and the approach of the 2026 midterm elections as factors that could turn the bill into a heated issue.

The lawsuit remains pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Strategy has not announced any immediate Bitcoin sales. The CLARITY Act continues to be considered in the Senate.