Crypto exchange Coinbase has lost a Supreme Court case over its Dogecoin sweepstakes. In Coinbase, Inc. v. Suski, consumers claimed they were duped into paying $100 or more to enter a sweepstakes in June 2021 for a chance to win prizes of up to $1.2 million in the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. In a unanimous ruling on Thursday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stated that the court, not an arbitrator, should decide whether the dispute belongs in arbitration.
Meanwhile, Coinbase’s stock price fell by more than 3.5% during mid-morning trading. Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal posted on X: “What a week. Some you win. Some you lose. We are grateful for having had the opportunity to present our case to the Court and appreciate the Court’s consideration of this matter.”
Previously, the Supreme Court ruled on Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski in 2023, determining that the case should be put on hold until the Suski arbitration case was resolved. The plaintiff, Abraham Bielski, accused Coinbase of weak security practices and stated that he was tricked into letting a scammer access his Coinbase account, leading to a $31,000 loss.
More recently, in the Southern District of New York, U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla wrote in her ruling that the SEC could pursue its lawsuit against Coinbase over unregistered securities sales.
