Claiming to have lost Bitcoin currently worth $108 million in the 2019 heist which saw Christchurch-based Cryptopia hacked and some thirty million dollars in cryptocurrency stolen, customer Vihang Sharma failed in a High Court bid to halt any payout by Cryptopia liquidators. Suspicious of Dr Sharma’s bona fides, the High Court required he provide verifiable details of his claimed loss.
Liquidators from Grant Thornton are working to a court-ordered plan to identify and pay Cryptopia customers a pro-rata distribution of assets remaining.
The High Court was told of ongoing discussions between the liquidators and Dr Sharma. Since Cryptopia required a unique email address for each customer account, the liquidators require proof from Dr Sharma of the email addresses used for each of his customer accounts so they can verify his claimed holdings.
Liquidators say they can find no account balances matching those claimed by Dr Sharma.
Dr Sharma claims he held up to 471 separate customer accounts with Cryptopia, all operated without an email identifier.
These accounts were operated solely through use of an API, an application programming interface, he claims. This provided sufficient client authentication to access his Cryptopia accounts and undertake trades, he says.
The liquidators say that even if these accounts were operated with an API key, Cryptopia protocols still required registration of an email address when setting up accounts. They refused to investigate his claim without evidence of account registration emails.
Days before the court-ordered September cut-off date for customer claims, Dr Sharma asked for a High Court order blocking liquidators from making any distributions until his claim was finalised.
Justice Isac refused.
Dr Sharma left it to the last minute in his attempt to block payouts, Justice Isac said. Later payment on any valid claim by Dr Sharma can form part of a court-supervised final wash-up, he ruled.
An unverified claim to be owed $108 million is not grounds for an immediate injunction, he ruled. Dr Sharma must come back to court with further evidence.
Justice Isac said the court also wants to hear about the probable connection between the Dr Vihang Sharma now seeking a court injunction to block payouts and the Dr Vihang Sharma who earlier in the year sought to bribe a court registry official to get information off the court file while falsely claiming Justice Isac was conducting ‘secret teleconferences.’
Dr Sharma is based overseas.
Sharma v. Cryptopia Ltd – High Court (2.10.25)
25.212