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Investors who lost money on the collapsed crypto brokerage Voyager Digital filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on June 23, 2026, challenging the dismissal of claims against Mark Cuban and his NBA franchise, the Dallas Mavericks. The appeal keeps alive a legal fight that began in 2022 and carries significant implications for how courts in the United States, and regulators abroad watching the case, handle celebrity crypto promotions.

The case was thrown out on December 30, 2025 by Judge Roy K. Altman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. His ruling did not address whether Cuban's public statements about Voyager were misleading or whether the platform's tokens constituted unregistered securities. Instead, the court found that plaintiffs had failed to establish sufficient legal ties between a Texas-based Cuban and a Florida court, dismissing the case on procedural grounds alone. A separate May 2026 order declined to reopen the case or transfer it to Texas, where the jurisdictional obstacle would not apply. That refusal is also part of the current appeal.

Cuban and the Mavericks struck a five-year deal with Voyager in October 2021, which included naming rights to the Mavs Gaming Hub and a fan promotion offering $100 in Bitcoin for a $100 deposit using the code MAVS100. Cuban described Voyager as "as close to risk-free as you're going to get in the crypto universe," a statement widely quoted in subsequent court filings. Voyager CEO Steve Ehrlich framed the partnership as a vehicle to help people achieve "true financial freedom and build intergenerational wealth through crypto" and to educate people all over the world on ways to use crypto in their everyday lives. Within roughly eight months of the partnership launch, Voyager had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Voyager's collapse in July 2022 was triggered by a $650 million loan default from Three Arrows Capital, a Singapore-based crypto firm, which wiped out a significant portion of the brokerage's liquidity. At its peak, Voyager held 3.5 million users and roughly $5.9 billion in assets; by the time of the bankruptcy filing, customer assets had fallen to approximately $1.3 billion, illustrating the scale of asset flight in the months before the collapse. Customers who had deposited funds received an initial recovery of approximately 35 to 36 cents on the dollar, calculated at asset values as of July 5, 2022. A planned $1.65 billion acquisition by FTX collapsed when that exchange filed for bankruptcy in November 2022. The platform's native loyalty token, VGX, traded at approximately $0.000265 with a total market capitalization of roughly $242,000 USD, according to CoinMarketCap data as of May 2026; current pricing may differ. It is now managed by a separate entity called the VGX Foundation, entirely disconnected from the defunct brokerage.

Three celebrity co-defendants in the original lawsuit, former NFL tight end Rob Gronkowski, NBA player Victor Oladipo, and NASCAR driver Landon Cassill, settled out of court in 2024 for a combined $2.4 million and exited the case. Cuban and the Mavericks chose not to settle. Cuban's legal team cited Judge Altman's finding that the claims "could not be corrected through amendments," a finding that closes the federal litigation avenue at the district level. Plaintiff attorneys from Boies Schiller Flexner, David Boies's firm, along with Adam Moskowitz, are leading the appeal. A separate $4.2 billion lawsuit against the NBA itself, for negligence related to its institutional endorsement of Voyager, remains ongoing.

The outcome at the Eleventh Circuit carries consequences well beyond the parties involved. If the court reverses the dismissal, the case returns to district court for a full hearing on whether the promotional language was misleading and whether Voyager tokens were sold as unregistered securities. If the dismissal is upheld, plaintiffs may attempt to refile in Texas. Either way, the core factual and legal questions about celebrity endorsement liability in crypto have not yet been decided by any court.

For retail investors outside the United States, the case illustrates a structural problem that is far more acute. India's capital markets regulator, SEBI, introduced finfluencer restrictions in January 2025 and has pursued major enforcement actions, including an order impounding over 546 crore rupees (roughly $65 million USD) against Avadhut Sathe, a prominent financial influencer. In Kenya and Nigeria, where crypto adoption rates rank among the highest globally by peer-to-peer volume, specific legislation holding celebrity or institutional endorsers liable for promoted platforms does not yet exist. Kenya has established an active Technical Working Group to assess crypto regulation, as documented in a 2025 IMF Technical Assistance Report, while Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission has moved to license virtual asset service providers following the Binance enforcement controversy of 2024. The International Organization of Securities Commissions published a voluntary global framework for finfluencer regulation in May 2025, giving member regulators a template, but uptake among member regulators remains voluntary and inconsistent. The Cuban case, even in its current unresolved state, serves as a reference point for regulators in those markets as they consider how to assign accountability when a platform collapses and investors lose money.