The vision of consumers and businesses being able to directly control their own financial assets and investments through use of electronic cryptocurrency platforms rests upon the idea that when users seek to use such platforms they will in fact function properly and that the platform operators will not work against their own users. But what happens when a user charges that the platform and/or its operator in fact behaved badly and that the user was injured as a result? Irrespective of whatever contract claims the user might try to assert under the particular terms of the platform's user agreement, does the user have any common-law tort remedies?

A series of rulings over recent months in three Northern District of California cases provides such plaintiffs with little encouragement. On motions to dismiss in these cases, the courts have rejected proposed tort claims variously sounding in negligence, conversion, trespass to chattels, defamation and prima facie tort, among other common-law theories, and seeking compensatory and punitive damages.