The PCT Litigation Trust filed a lawsuit on May 15, 2026, in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court, alleging that Swan Bitcoin's parent company, Electric Solidus, used insider information to transfer nearly $970 million in assets just before crypto custodian Prime Trust collapsed. The transferred assets include 11,992 BTC (worth around $917 million at current prices), $24.66 million in cash, $5 million in stablecoins, and 91,144 XRP. The complaint's core claim is clear: Swan, unlike most Prime clients, avoided massive losses because it possessed non-public internal information and moved quickly to withdraw fiat and crypto before Prime filed for bankruptcy.
The Key Figure: A Prime Trust Executive With Dual Roles
The lawsuit reveals a pivotal link between Swan and Prime Trust: a Prime Trust executive also served as a paid external consultant for Swan and lived near Swan CEO Cory Klippsten. This dual role allowed the executive to pass confidential regulatory developments to Swan. On May 22, 2023, days before a regulatory meeting between Nevada's Financial Institutions Division (FID) and Prime Trust, the executive notified Klippsten via encrypted message. The day before that meeting—May 25, 2023—Swan formally notified Prime Trust that it would move all its business away from the custodian.
Circumventing the 90-Day Preference Period
In bankruptcy law, asset transfers within 90 days before a filing can be deemed "preferential" and clawed back by the trustee. The preference period in this case runs from May 16 to August 14, 2023, and Swan's large-scale transfers fell squarely within it. The complaint alleges Swan was aware of the risk and took deliberate steps to avoid liability: "Swan recognized that withdrawing its entire business from Prime could expose it to significant preference exposure. It therefore worked to protect itself from such risk." The exact evasion tactics were not disclosed, but the language points to intentional action rather than negligence.
The Collapse of Prime Trust
Prime Trust's downfall was not sudden. In June 2023, Nevada regulators shut down the crypto custodian, citing massive liabilities and inability to repay client assets. That August, Prime Trust filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware. Early regulatory filings showed it owed clients at least $82 million due to a fiat deposit shortfall. The PCT Litigation Trust was established under Prime Core Technologies' bankruptcy proceedings specifically to recover assets for creditors. The presiding judge is Judge Stickles of the Delaware Bankruptcy Court.
Swan's Rebuttal: Nine Months of Preparation, Not a Flight
Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten strongly denies the allegations, stating that the company's preparation to migrate business away from Prime Trust began nine months before the bankruptcy, not due to any inside tip. Swan also argues that client crypto assets were held in separate trust accounts and thus not part of Prime Trust's bankruptcy estate, making them unrecoverable. The case is in its early stages, and whether Swan actually had insider information remains to be proven. If the claims hold, this could become one of the largest preference clawback efforts in crypto bankruptcy history and may reshape industry practices around custodian switches.