The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, alleges that Tether and Bitfinex engaged in a complex scheme to fraudulently inflate the prices of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, through large, carefully timed purchases in order to signal to the market that there was massive demand and thereby cause the prices of those assets to skyrocket.
The plaintiffs allege that Tether and Bitfinex violated both the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and the Sherman Antitrust Act. Additionally, the plaintiffs claim that expert analysis has shown that Bitfinex and Tether issued unbacked USDT and used it to purchase large volumes of cryptocurrency, misleading the market about the high demand for it.
“Tether transferred billions of USDT into its crypto wallets without backing them with U.S. dollars, essentially creating stablecoins out of thin air. These shenanigans ultimately resulted in billions of dollars in losses for innocent cryptocurrency buyers,” the lawsuit states.
To recap, this is the third lawsuit filed in the case, which was filed in 2019 and has since faced multiple delays, including the removal of the plaintiffs’ legal counsel in 2022. Tether and Bitfinex fought the plaintiffs’ motion to amend the complaint in 2023, calling it a desperate attempt to revive a hopeless case.
Source: Bits
I am an experienced journalist, writer, and editor with a passion for finance and business news. I have been working in the journalism field for over 6 years, covering a variety of topics from finance to technology. As an author at World Stock Market, I specialize in finance business-related topics.
