Hyde Park Venture Partners Fund III, L.P. v. FairXchange, LLC, C.A. No. 2022-0344-JTL (Del. Ch. 2024)

Ross Aronstam & Moritz successfully represented Coinbase Global Inc. and FairXchange, LLC in an appraisal trial resulting in the Court of Chancery awarding the deal price. The case arose form Coinbase’s 2022 acquisition of FairXchange, an early-stage futures exchange, for approximately $330 million. A venture capital fund investor brought a statutory appraisal proceeding arguing that FairX should have been sold for hundreds of millions more than the deal price based on its expert’s discounted cash flow analysis. In an important case involving novel issues concerning the valuation of early-stage companies, the Court of Chancery rejected the investor’s valuation in favor of contemporaneous market evidence of value, awarding the deal price.