Altcoins News

Story: ASX Shareholder Targets Former Directors Over $14.4M Blockchain Debacle

By James Thorp

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A Decade-Long Disaster in the Making. The CHESS replacement project kicked off in 2016. ASX partnered with New York-based Digital Asset,…

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ASIC's Case and ASX's Admission. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission moved against ASX back in August 2024,…

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What Stays Unknown. The names of the former directors being targeted haven't been released.

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A shareholder is taking aim at the people who ran ASX when its blockchain dream collapsed. Rosherville Pty Ltd, an ASX shareholder, wants Federal Court permission to launch a…

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The legal push relies on sections 236 and 237 of Australia's Corporations Act. If the court says yes, Rosherville would pursue the action on behalf of ASX itself — not against it.

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The CHESS replacement project kicked off in 2016. ASX partnered with New York-based Digital Asset, a firm focused on distributed ledger technology, with the goal of becoming the…

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Things got bad fast in late 2022. ASX halted the project in November of that year after an Accenture review found major design flaws baked into the system.

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The financial hit has been real. The Federal Court fined ASX $14.4 million in July 2026 and ordered it to pay an additional $2.1 million toward ASIC's legal costs.

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The Australian Securities and Investments Commission moved against ASX back in August 2024, accusing the exchange of misleading the market.

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Read also: Wintermute Bets $1 Billion on AI Trading as TradFi Push Targets 50% of Revenue

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ASX conceded to misleading conduct in June 2026. That admission came before the Federal Court handed down the fine the following month.

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It's worth stepping back for a second. Derivative actions by shareholders — where a shareholder sues on behalf of a company rather than for personal damages — aren't common.

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The names of the former directors being targeted haven't been released. The specific breaches of duty alleged against them haven't been spelled out publicly either.

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What is clear is the scale of what went wrong. ASX spent years and enormous resources on a project that ended in cancellation, regulatory fines, and now shareholder litigation.

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More context: Binance bStocks Hits Second-Largest Tokenized Stock Issuer in Under Two Months

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