US Supreme Court Takes on Landmark Crypto Case with Coinbase Lawsuits Today – Here's What You Need to Know

cryptonews.com:

Today, the US Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in Coinbase's efforts to push two class-action lawsuits against it into arbitration. This is a historic event too, as it will be the first time the nine Justices of this court will face a crypto-related case. 

Notably, this is not a crypto case per se. Bloomberg reported that this will be "a procedural battle over arbitration, rather than a crypto-specific matter," stating that:

"At issue is whether a lawsuit can move forward in federal court while a company presses an appeal that would send the case to arbitration."

This refers to the company's user agreement that requires disputes to be sent to arbitration. A federal court, however, allowed the two cases in question to proceed. Coinbase filed a joint petition to the Supreme Court and argued that trial court proceedings should be automatically paused when a party files a non-frivolous appeal seeking to compel arbitration. 

As for the two lawsuits: in one, Coinbase user Abraham Bielski claims that the exchange should compensate him for the $31,000 he lost after he gave a scammer pretending to be a PayPal representative remote access to his account in 2021. The company's customer service system failed to appropriately respond to requests for assistance, Bielski stated. 

The other lawsuit claims that Coinbase held a $1.2 million dogecoin (DOGE) sweepstakes without adequately disclosing that entrants didn’t have to buy or sell the coin. User David Suski sued the exchange and marketing firm Marden-Kane, alleging that Coinbase's marketing for the sweepstakes deceived customers on whether they could participate for free or had to buy the coin first. 

Arbitration agreements are common in crypto as in any other industry with retail