By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
According to Tether, it is currently running its usual business activities and focuses on its customers.
Yesterday, Bloomberg published a report stating that Tether (USDT) executives have been allegedly involved in conducting bank fraud. As Coinspeaker revealed yesterday, the Department of Justice has recently uncovered a bank fraud conducted by the executives at Tether many years ago. Now, Tether is under formal investigation.
Several hours after the Bloomberg report, Tether published a statement as a response. According to Tether, Bloomberg’s article is based on unnamed sources and years-old allegations, and is “patently designed to generate clicks”. Further, Tether stated that it follows a model of “repackaging stale” that seems to be news and gains attraction.
Further, Tether stated:
“Tether routinely has open dialogue with law enforcement agencies, including the US Department of Justice, as part of our commitment to cooperation, transparency, and accountability. We are proud of our role as industry leaders in promoting cooperation between industry and government authorities in the US and around the world. We remain committed to our customers and the industry-leading technology and transparency that has led to our growth.”
Currently, Tether is running its usual business activities and focuses on its customers.
Notably, it is not the first time Tether has got into hot water. Federal prosecutors have been keeping an eye on Tether since at least 2018. For example, two years ago, Tether was allegedly involved in crypto market manipulation. In particular, Tether was allegedly sourcing USDT tokens to its crypto affiliate Bitfinex without actually backing them physical USD.
Earlier, in 2018, NYAG accused Bitfinex of misappropriating $850 million worth of funds and later covering up by issuing Tether’s USDT stablecoins. This case came to an end only at the beginning of 2021, when Tether agreed to pay $18.5 million in a penalty to NYAG.
Market Performance Affected by News
Following Bloomberg’s report about Tether conducting fraud activity, the market evaluation of BTC has noticed a sudden fluctuation drop. As the news went viral on leading media outlets, Bitcoin has registered a fall of $1000 adversely affecting the investors all around. Within 24 hours, Bitcoin dropped by 3.42%. At the moment of writing, it is trading at $37,065.96. Its market cap is $695.6 billion.
Other coins dropped in price as well. For example, Ethereum (ETH) dropped by 2.78% to $2,190.08 in the last 24 hours, its market cap declined by 6.54%.
XRP declined as well. Its price dropped by 5.93% to $0.6256.
Tether (USDT) itself has lost 0.02% in price. As of the press moment, it is trading at $1.00. As for its market cap, it totals $61.79 billion.
