A "Weekend Club" crypto pact fell apart - and one missing document decided it.
A British Columbia tribunal has ordered a man to repay $3,000 he was trusted to invest in crypto, after he could not prove he did.
The Civil Resolution Tribunal released its decision on July 23, 2026, in a dispute over an informal arrangement the two men called the "Weekend Club." One man handed money to the other to invest in a cryptocurrency account, with any gains set aside for weekend outings.
Between October 2023 and July 2024, the applicant paid the respondent $3,000 in four transfers. When he asked for the money back on October 31, 2024 - saying he wanted out of cryptocurrency ahead of the US election - he was told the investments had dropped to zero.
The applicant argued the respondent never invested the money at all and instead spent it on personal expenses. The respondent denied that, saying he had invested the funds but that they lost all their value.
The tribunal member did not have to decide who was right about personal spending. What mattered was evidence. The respondent, who represented himself, filed no financial records showing any investment or any loss. The tribunal noted that if the money had been invested, records would have been easy to produce.
That gap decided the case. Drawing what tribunals call an adverse inference - the principle that missing evidence can count against the party who should have had it - the member found the respondent had not shown he invested the money as required, and ordered him to repay the full $3,000.
The applicant did not win everything he sought. He had also claimed about $2,000 in profit he said the investment would have earned, bringing his capped claim to $5,000, the tribunal's small claims limit. But the tribunal found he had not proved he directed any specific investment. His evidence pointed to Bitcoin, while the transfer records referenced "Pepe," a memecoin. Because he could not show what he had actually asked for, the profit claim was dismissed.
A separate claim - $50 the applicant said he gave the respondent to pass to the respondent's daughter as a birthday present - was also dismissed. The tribunal found the supporting evidence was hearsay and unreliable.
In all, the tribunal ordered the respondent to pay $3,385 within 14 days: the $3,000, plus $210.04 in pre-judgment interest and $175 in tribunal fees.
For advisors and firms, the takeaway is less about crypto than about documentation. The case is a reminder that anyone who takes money to invest on someone else's behalf carries the burden of showing what they did with it. Informal, handshake arrangements leave no paper trail - and when a dispute reaches a decision maker, the absence of records can be as damaging as any allegation.
