On 15 August 2023, David Ruscoe and Russell Moore from Grant Thornton New Zealand were appointed liquidators of Digital Asset Exchange Limited (trading as ‘Dasset’), a New Zealand digital assets trading platform.

As mentioned in the Liquidators' fourth report on Dasset issued March 2025; to progress the liquidation in the most pragmatic and cost-efficient way, the Liquidators attempted to seek creditors’ consent to the orders sought below. This consent was not obtained and therefore to progress the Liquidation a hearing needs to be held to determine the future conduct of the liquidation.  

The orders sort at a high-level are as follows:

  1. Whether the Digital Assets are "property" that the Liquidators are required to distribute under the Companies Act 1993;
  2. Whether the Digital Assets are Company property or held on trust by the Company for the Account Holders; and
  3. Ancillary issues that flow from the Court's conclusions to the above two issues 

It is the Liquidators’ position that the digital assets are property and that there is an evidential and legal basis to conclude that the Digital Assets are subject to a trust in favour of Account Holders.  

Counsel for the Liquidators has been instructed to advocate for this position with an amicus curiae appointed to assist the court as a contradictor to this position to ensure all relevant interests are represented in the hearing. 

With this application the Liquidators also sought an order permitting the conversion of Digital Assets to New Zealand dollars to cover the Liquidators costs to date, to allow the current and future costs of the liquidation to be met including the costs of this proceeding. The Liquidators costs to date include legal fees, investigations, AWS hosting costs since the start of the Liquidation in August 2023 and other IT specialist costs beyond the direct fees charged by the Liquidators. 

This conversion is required to enable the Liquidators to continue to progress this liquidation which may lead to a distribution of assets to Account Holders. 

This application was filed on 17 March 2025, and the hearing has been set down for 14 – 15 July 2025 in the High Court of Wellington.  

Procedural orders including permitting the liquidators to convert Digital Assets to New Zealand Dollars were granted on 23 April 2025. As part of this application the court has issued orders to provide service of these proceedings by emailing all known account holders, shareholders and creditors with the link to the documents below.  

Copies of the relevant proceedings and court documents can be found linked below:

  1. Sealed Orders for procedural directions and to convert cryptocurrency 
  2. Interlocutory application for procedural directions and conversion of cryptocurrency
  3. Memorandum of counsel in support of interlocutory application for procedural directions and conversion of cryptocurrency
  4. Sworn affidavit of Malcolm Russell Moore in support of interlocutory application for procedural directions and conversion of cryptocurrency

Due to the large number of Account Holders, we will not be responding to individual emails. All previous communications and circulars produced by the Liquidators can be found on the Dasset liquidation page.

The next statutory report is due in September, and we will provide a formal update on the liquidation progress via this report.