Coinbase sued over Dogecoin sweepstake ad campaign

A Coinbase user has filed a class action lawsuit seeking $5 million in damages because of an allegedly misleading Dogecoin campaign.

In the legal document, David Suski, the plaintiff, said he was deceived into trading $100 of Dogecoin (DOGE) for an entry into a $1.2 million sweepstakes offer on Coinbase. The document claims that Coinbase failed to communicate that a person could enter the sweepstakes without purchasing $100 of Dogecoin.

The first day Dogecoin was available for trade on Coinbase, June 3, 2021, the company sent out an email to users about the sweepstakes stating “Trade Doge, Win Doge.” The email had details on how to enter through trading or if a person was to go to a separate “rules and details” page they would find you could also enter by sending Coinbase a 3x5-inch index card. The index card needed to have the customer’s name, address, email address, phone and date of birth written on it in order to enter.

In the document, the plaintiff alleges the campaign promoting the sweepstakes was misleading because anyone could enter free of charge by mailing in an index card with the required information. It then alleges the advertisement for sweepstakes was designed to “deceive and confuse” the plaintiff and other customers into trading $100 of Dogecoin in order to qualify for entry. The document also said if the ads were made clear about a 100 percent free entry option, the plaintiff would not have given Coinbase $100 or paid the commission for the trade to acquire Dogecoin, as he already had 1,000 Dogecoin in an account with another company. The class action complaint states:

“The only reason that Plaintiff undertook to buy more Dogecoins from Coinbase was because the Company led him to believe that doing so was necessary to enter Coinbase’s $1.2 million Sweepstakes.”

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The lawsuit seeks more than $5 million in damages on behalf of the plaintiff, Suski, as well as millions of other Coinbase users.