Cryptocurrency broker Voyager Digital has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit over its alleged misleading of customers about hidden fees, Bloomberg wrote Wednesday (Dec. 29).
The lawsuit says Voyager advertised its trades as 100% commission free. However, there are allegations that there are secret commissions in the pricing of trades that could sometimes exceed the disclosed fees and commissions from competitors.
Michael Legg, chief communications officer with Voyager, said the action was “without any merit.”
Mark Cassidy, plaintiff in the Voyager case, said he’d started trading crypto on Robinhood, but left that platform after the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) accused Robinhood of not informing customers that it was selling stock orders to Wall Street trading firms.
Cassidy then switched to Voyager because of that company’s promise of no commission trades — but then, he started to see the wide bid-ask spreads on transactions and reviews speculating hidden fees. Cassidy was quoted by Bloomberg saying Voyager was “basically ripping people off small pieces at a time.”
The case against Voyager cites analyses saying that the total damages owed to the platform’s users could be over $1 billion. Adam Moskowitz, the attorney who filed the lawsuit, said the company seemed to be “set up, in a way, like a carnival — every consumer is going to lose.”
Voyager also recently partnered with CoinLedger on helping users with capital gains, losses and tax reporting.
See also: Voyager, CoinLedger Partner on Crypto Tax Reporting
Voyager said in a news release earlier in the month that the nature of crypto and digital assets, with the transfers from various platforms, can make tax time hard, particularly with tracking cost basis, a necessity for capital gains tax reporting.
CoinLedger’s help will soothe the problems by teaming with exchanges, wallets and blockchains to allow for tracking of digital asset transaction histories.
Voyager said its customers can use the platform for their 2021 tax returns next year, letting them import transactions and get reports.
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