SICC Freezes S$75M in BTC and USDC, Limits Cross-Border Use of Disclosure

For international dispute lawyers, the SICC's March 2026 order is a case study in how commercial courts handle crypto asset freezing and evidence disclosure across borders. The court granted the injunction over 780 BTC and 816,773 USDC, but pointedly refused to let the claimants use the defendant's disclosure in parallel foreign injunction proceedings. That boundary matters for enforcement strategy and due process.

The Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC) has granted an interim injunction freezing approximately S$75 million in Bitcoin and USD Coin in a dispute between the operator of one of the world's largest cryptocurrency trading platforms and a long-standing customer. The judgment, issued in March 2026 by Singapore High Court judge Aidan Xu alongside SICC International Judges Anthony Meagher and David Goddard and publicised through an August 2026 press release, prohibits the defendant from dealing with 816,773 USDC and 780 BTC that were moved away from two specialised wallets, along with any proceeds of those assets.

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For financial and market participants, the S$75 million freeze is not a routine customer complaint.

The underlying failure is a striking operational breakdown. The platform's specialised wallets for the defendant had ceased support in 2018, but the claimant's internal ledger failed to record transfers out of those wallets in March 2020, leaving the ledgers showing empty balances. Acting on that mistaken record, the claimants transferred 2,500 BTC and 2,500 BCH into the defendant's other wallets in July 2024. The defendant then converted 20 BTC into roughly 816,773 USDC and moved that stablecoin and 780 BTC into wallets not hosted by the claimants between July and November 2024. The claimants discovered the ledger error only in January 2025, froze the defendant's wallets, and recovered the remaining 1,700 BTC. The SICC has now ordered disclosure of the whereabouts of the transferred assets, but declined to allow the claimants to use that disclosed information when seeking similar injunctive relief in other jurisdictions.

The decision carries substantial legal weight because it combines proprietary injunctive relief, asset tracing, and cross-border evidence management in one ruling. Singapore's SICC has been positioning itself as a credible venue for complex cross-border commercial disputes, including those involving digital assets. The order confirms that courts are willing to treat cryptoassets as identifiable property capable of being frozen and traced, but it also draws a deliberate boundary around the use of compelled disclosure. By refusing to allow the disclosed information to be deployed in foreign injunction applications, the court balances effective domestic relief against the risk of extraterritorial overreach and parallel forum shopping.

For financial and market participants, the S$75 million freeze is not a routine customer complaint. It exposes how an internal ledger reconciliation failure can persist for years and ultimately trigger a large erroneous transfer of customer assets. An exchange that cannot accurately track wallet balances and historical support status faces significant counterparty risk, potential reserve-integrity questions, and legal exposure. The fact that the platform recovered only 1,700 BTC while 780 BTC and 816,773 USDC remain subject to freezing and disclosure means the dispute is unresolved and may lead to further enforcement proceedings abroad. Investors and counterparties will likely scrutinise whether similar ledger gaps exist in other accounts.