NY attorney general expects documents within weeks in Bitfinex/Tether case

The Office of the New York Attorney General, or OAG, has requested a deadline extension for iFinex Inc — the parent company of both crypto exchange Bitfinex and stablecoin issuer Tether — to produce the documents requested for their ongoing legal battle.

On Dec. 9, 2020, the OAG wrote to Justice Joel Cohen to request the deadline be pushed back until Jan. 15, 2020 — presumably a typo and actually a request for the same date in 2021.

The request followed a virtual hearing on Sep. 17, that concluded with the judge ordering a 90-day extension for iFinex to produce documents relating to business dealings between Bitfinex and Tether in April 2019 — when the OAG accuses iFinex of having commingled funds between the two companies to cover up $850 million that Bitfinex lost by engaging the services of shadow-bank, Crypto Capital.

The OAG asserts that iFinex has cooperated in producing the requested documents since the Sep. 17 hearing, predicting that the process will be “finalized in the coming weeks.”

Despite the persistent controversy, Tether’s USDT has seen yet another record year for adoption, with the stable token expanding to operate on the Omni, Ethereum, Eos, Algorand, Liquid, and Solana networks.

According to CoinMarketCap, Tether’s capitalization has increased 382% from $4.1 billion at the start of January to more than $19.76 billion today — suggesting that Tether’s May 2019 admission that USDT was only backed 74% by cash and cash equivalents has done little to dampen demand for the stablecoin.

Tether’s relative volume dominance over BTC has also extended to 65.5%, compared to 16.2% at the start of the year. USDT currently represents 38% of combined crypto volume.