DVA & Anor v DVC

Case Significance

Decided on 24 April 2026 by a three-judge panel of the Singapore International Commercial Court — Aidan Xu J, Anthony Meagher IJ, and David Goddard IJ (delivering the grounds of decision) — this case arose from a dispute between operators of one of the world's largest digital asset trading platforms (the claimants DVA and DVB) and a longstanding platform customer, DVC, who had held assets across numerous accounts since around 2013 and had himself founded a blockchain and a cryptocurrency exchange. The claimants alleged that in July 2024 they mistakenly transferred significant quantities of digital assets into two of DVC's wallets in the belief that DVC held equivalent assets of a particular kind in two other wallets, and sought a proprietary injunction to protect those transferred assets pending the resolution of proceedings originally filed in the High Court General Division in November 2025 and transferred by consent to the SICC as SIC/OA 8/2026.

The case addresses the civil procedure framework for proprietary injunctions in the context of cryptocurrency and digital asset disputes, an area of growing significance given the scale and complexity of assets held on digital trading platforms. The court's engagement with the mistaken transfer of digital assets and the proprietary nature of the claimants' interest in those assets makes this a notable decision for practitioners advising on crypto-asset recovery and interim relief in Singapore's international commercial court.