Bitfinex and Tether settled with the Office of the New York Attorney General in the landmark case against Tether. New York authorities alleged that Tether misrepresented the degree to which Tether (USDT) coins were backed by fiat collateral. The settlement requires Bitfinex and Tether to pay $18.5 million for damages to the state of New York and submit to periodic reporting of their reserves. The terms of the settlement mandate Bitfinex and Tether to report their current reserve status and budget and any transactions between the two companies, as well as provide public reports for the specific composition of their …

In a short statement today, Bitfinex — the sister company to centralized stablecoin Tether — announced that it has repaid Tether an outstanding loan balance of $550 million. This action fully closes out a larger $750 million loan from a $900 million credit line first issued in 2018 — a credit line which has been at the center of a market manipulation lawsuit in New York and a broader lawsuit from the New York Attorney General, among other legal proceedings. “Bitfinex is happy to announce that in January it repaid the remaining balance of $550,000,000 of the outstanding revolving loan …

The sudden rise of stocks like GameStop (GME) have shined a positive light on Bitcoin (BTC), as more retail investors look to “rail against” the financial status quo, according to Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino. Bitcoin’s price peaked north of $38,500 on Friday, just as U.S. stocks concluded their worst week of trading since October. The divergence between BTC and stocks was partly due to a massive short squeeze of institutional investors by a Reddit group called r/WallStreetBets. The Reddit buying frenzy was centered around GameStop, the video game and consumer electronics retailer. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, also added …

iFinex — the parent company of crypto exchange Bitfinex and stablecoin issuer Tether (USDT) — has written to the New York Supreme Court requesting that its upcoming trial date be pushed back even further. According to a filing submitted to the New York court system on Jan. 19, the legal counsel for iFinex Inc requested another 30 days to produce the documents demanded by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG). The document production process was supposed to be completed by Jan. 15 — a date which itself was an extension on the original deadline of Dec. 16. Legal counsel …

Paolo Ardoino, the outspoken chief technology officer of Bitfinex, took to Twitter this week to dispel concerns that Tether could be the next target of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. In response to a tweet from CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, Ardoino said Tether adheres to strict Know Yor Customer/Anti-Money Laundering regulations set forth by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. In other words, people who say Tether is less regulated are just spreading “FUD”— or fear, uncertainty and doubt. Ju’s original tweet said: “If SEC's next target is Tether, it's going to be very, …

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has started to rally once again on Dec. 13, rising above $19,200 after dropping to sub-$17,600 on Friday. The significant increase in buyer demand in that area indicates that BTC may have just seen a short-term bottom. When Bitcoin initially dropped to around $17,700, on-chain analysts, including Edward Morra and Nik Yaremchuk, pinpointed large buy orders on Bitfinex and Coinbase. As soon as the BTC price briefly dropped below $17,700, it started to rebound quickly, reclaiming $18,000 within three hours. Is this the new Bitcoin run-up to the all-time high? Conventional technical analysis suggested that …

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 …

Eosfinex, the Bitfinex-backed noncustodial exchange running on the Eos network, announced the listing of more than 15 ERC-20 tokens, primarily consisting of governance tokens of major decentralized finance protocols on Ethereum. The listing is made possible by a collaboration with pNetwork, a crypto-asset wrapping network that already brought cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) to Eos and Ethereum. The pNetwork tokens are distinguished by their lower case "p" prefix — for example, “pBTC” and “pLTC.” The listing on Eosfinex will occur in several phases. The first, scheduled for Thursday, will bring Uniswap’s token (pUNI), Band Protocol (pBAND), Balancer …

Back in 2016, 119,756 Bitcoin (BTC) was stolen from the Bitfinex crypto exchange. Some of the coins have continued to move between wallets over the years, including as recently as Monday. Blockchain data shows that an unknown crypto user has moved 270.97974 Bitcoin from a wallet associated with the hack. The sum is worth roughly $5.2 million at time of publication. The address 1GytseWXyzGpmHkcv9uDzkU9D8pLaGyR5x, which is believed to be associated with the hack, shows less than 0.001 BTC remaining. The BTC were sent to a previously unknown Bitcoin address, 3MyXrfSg7JFXLa7bD6YF1GnomEr8EXYRnx, which holds only the transacted amount. The hackers responsible for …

The market cap of Tether (USDT), a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, has surged in recent weeks, potentially helping to fuel the recent Bitcoin (BTC) rally that drove prices to near all-time highs. Paolo Ardoino, who serves as dual CTO to Bitfinex and Tether, tweeted Thursday that the supply of USDT increased by 1 billion over nine days, marking the second-fastest expansion in its history. The record was set on Sept. 4, 2020 when, over eight days, USDT's circulating supply increased by 1 billion. At press time, Tether had a market cap of nearly $19 billion, meaning that there are roughly 19 …

Amid a year of significant growth for the decentralized finance space within the crypto industry, British Virgin Islands-based crypto exchange Bitfinex has unveiled its new lending service today, called Bitfinex Borrow. "Bitfinex Borrow is a borrowing platform," Bitfinex chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino told Cointelegraph. “This particular offering isn’t about lending out your crypto and obtaining a rate of return on it," he said. “The crypto loan is obtained via Bitfinex’s peer-to-peer lending platform, though it may consist of a pool of available credit," he explained. So essentially, crypto borrowing and loans are not directly tied to a direct and …

The attorneys representing Reggie Fowler — the accused operator of the notorious shadow-bank to the crypto sector, Crypto Capital — have filed a motion to withdraw as Fowler’s counsel. According to the motion, law firm Hogan Lovells’ James McGovern and Michael Hefter have discussed withdrawing from the ongoing case between the businessman and the United States government since Feb. 26, after Fowler rejected a nine-figure plea deal the prior month. Crypto Capital is accused of providing unlicensed money-transmitting services, committing bank fraud, and laundering funds on behalf of Columbian drug cartels. Crypto exchange Bitfinex and sister company Tether further claim …