A Florida judge has declared that it is legally permissible for an individual to serve a legal notice to another party via non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in a landmark case in a federal court.
It is the first case in the United States where a federal court has greenlit serving a legal notice via NFTs. It follows on the heels of two separate rulings last year in New York and the United Kingdom enabling legal notices to be served through digital identifiers, or NFTs.
In December 2021, anonymous hackers stole $971,291 of Tether stablecoins from plaintiff Rangan Bandyopadhyay’s Coinbase wallet. Through subterfuge, the thieves compelled him to link the wallet to a liquidity mining project that didn’t exist, and eventually transferred his funds to a Binance Exchange Pool.
Bandyopadhyay sued the hackers despite not knowing their identities, and delivered the notice via NFTs to circumvent the problem of not having their home addresses or real names.
District judge Beth Bloom of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida declared last week that it was okay to send the legal notice via blockchain and NFTs, because that was the only way to get in touch with the defendants. The blockchain stores information on transactions, and had logged their activity even if their specific identities remained unknown.
As a result of the judgment, the hackers are required to repay Bandyopadhyay the stolen funds – likely in interest-bearing fiat currency.
Source: The Street
