We mentioned in an article published Yesterday on the Arab Bitcoin website, a new lawsuit was filed against Bitfinex and Tether, accusing them of manipulating the price of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

Bitfinex is responding to the current class action lawsuit against it and Tether, calling the entire case “unfounded.”

Bitfinex/Tether deplores ‘baseless’ lawsuit:

Stuart Hoegner, general counsel for Bitfinex, described the lawsuit as an unproven conspiracy theory Advertising Yesterday’s official statement:

The plaintiffs’ allegations are still limited either by facts or by law.

It confuses perceived relationship with causation in an effort to support incorrect and unsupported theories.

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Bitfinex and Tether have been accused by five US citizens of manipulating the price of Bitcoin between 2016 and 2017.

Prosecutors allege that the joint executive management of Tether and Bitfinex colluded to print billions of unbacked USDT, which were then used to buy and inflate the price of Bitcoin.

Adding Poloniex and Bittrex to the list of defendants:

In the latest amended lawsuit, Bittrex and Poloniex were added to the list of defendants.

The amended lawsuit notes the role of the platforms mentioned in the case, as follows:

With the help and will of Bittrex and Poloniex, these platforms fraudulently used Tether to make strategically timely massive purchases of crypto-commodities at a time when the price was falling.

Bitfinex told in its response to the case that the only consistency found in the plaintiff’s claims is a lack of evidence.

Bitfinex added in its response that the plaintiffs had confused causation with correlation.

Huegner said:

If you see a group of people opening their umbrellas, this does not mean that they caused the rain.

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Tether support:

The announcement asserts that every issue of the stablecoin USDT is fully backed 1:1 with the US dollar, and cites publicly available evidence to counter the theory that USDT has been used to manipulate the price of Bitcoin.

Bloomberg reported in 2019, Tether once admitted that only 74% of its issuance was actually backed by cash or short-term securities.

Read:Bitcoin price drop to $38,000 triggered $700 million liquidations

Contrasting evidence can be found, also publicly available, indicating that Tether has been used to inflate the price of Bitcoin.

Therefore, the issue is still not settled yet.

Responding to the accusation and the latest lawsuit, Tether told that it prides itself on playing a critical role in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

This lawsuit is baseless and an insult to the ingenuity of Tether’s customers, as well as the success and innovation of the industry and all who play a role in it.

It is worth noting that Tether has become the third largest currency after Bitcoin and Ethereum in terms of total market capitalization.

Read also:

$5 billion USDT Tether issued since January… what does that mean?

Manipulation in the cryptocurrency world… Absence of regulations or the authority of cryptocurrency exchanges?