With cryptocurrency exchange Dasset in liquidation, and users facing an apparent six million dollar shortfall, liquidators have High Court approval to treat the $600,000 remaining as trust assets to be divided pro rata between unpaid customers. Co-founder Stephen Macaskill has gone to ground; believed now to be overseas. A Serious Fraud Office investigation into Dasset operations is underway.
Digital Asset Exchange Ltd, trading as Dasset, was established in 2017 as an online trading platform with the stated aim of being a custodial trustee, holding individual currency and crypto-currency accounts on behalf of customers.
Dasset offered to action trades on behalf of customers, promising transactions would be recorded under each users name. This did not happen.
Liquidators have found that Dasset simply dumped all currency and crypto-currency holdings into one bucket. Poor record keeping meant specific assets could not be identified as held on behalf of any one customer.
Dasset’s liquidators have identified unauthorised and unrecorded withdrawals totalling some five million USD were actioned in the three years prior to Dasset’s 2023 liquidation.
A further complication facing liquidators is that customer trades were executed by Dasset through a master account held with third party provider Bittrex. Mr Macaskill alone holds the digital master key.
Operations by US-based Bittrex are currently being wound down. Its crypto-currency exchanges in Lichenstein and Bermuda are both in liquidation.
The High Court was told Dasset liquidators suspect that company operations collapsed at some point into a ponzi scheme. Customers asking for their positions to be cashed out were paid from new money coming in, leaving user accounts unreconciled.
Dasset has about 5000 registered users.
The High Court approved liquidators’ application for all funds recovered to be held in one pool, with users to be paid pro-rata on the basis of how much they are owed.
Poor record keeping by Dasset meant this was the only pragmatic approach, Justice Gendall ruled.
These funds, currently totalling some $600,000, are trust assets, not available to meet claims by Dasset’s trade creditors, he further ruled. Wording of Dasset’s contracts with customers promised their money would be held separately, in trust, with Dasset as custodian.
Liquidators have given Dasset’s registered users until 10 November 2025 to file proof of how much they are owed. Late applications risk missing out on any pro rata payout.
re Digital Asset Exchange Ltd – High Court (18.07.25)
25.164