Red flags to consider regarding Tether and Bitfinex's history:
1. They fired their auditor after promising to provide a full on audit, after they realized that their books were a mess.
2. DOJ documents show chats between Bitfinex staff literally admitting they have to print 800 million USDT to prevent the exchange and Tether itself from collapsing.
3. They struggle to keep bank accounts open for both Tether and Bitfinex, HSBC kicked them out, UBS too, Wells Fargo as well. This got so bad at some point they had to resort to using an unlicensed bank in the Bahamas to prevent liquidity problems. They resorted to opening shell companies with fake business plans in order to access bank accounts, often lying to the banks about their business activities. They even asked their customers making cash withdrawals to not communicate to their bank about the company being a crypto exchange by fear of having their accounts closed. Anyone who operates a business this way is a fraudster. This was exposed a few years back but no one bothered to care, most crypto actors shrugged it off fearing that throwing oil at the fire would only contribute to killing the market faster.
4. The ownership of those companies is very obscure and the people you see in public are mostly pawns and employees. To this day the company has so many entities across the globe that identifying a UBO is still a challenge even for the regulators.
5. They used the same shady panamanian payment processor several crypto scams used in the past, from QuadrigaCX (Owned "died" in india 2 weeks after writing his will and 265m CAD vanished before the market went parabolic) to several european based crypto ventures that went bust.
6. The only bank that "attested" reserves for Tether was Noble Bank in Puerto Rico, CEO had a history of forgery and cooking books and the bank went under so without a real audit this claim is dubious at best.
7. They represent such a systemic risk that even Binance CEO CZ had to intervene in 2018 to reassure people and delay the runs we see today on exchanges. He claimed he met with in the background with Tether and verified himself that USDT was fully backed although he never provided proof. He was seeking to control the backlash more than showing the truth because most chinese exchanges run exclusively on Tether, without it they're insolvent. This is why CZ spent the next 4 years heavily investing in his BNB ecosystem (Even breaking several laws in the process to make it a success), to provide a counter balance to the exchange's dependency on Tether.
1. They fired their auditor after promising to provide a full on audit, after they realized that their books were a mess.
2. DOJ documents show chats between Bitfinex staff literally admitting they have to print 800 million USDT to prevent the exchange and Tether itself from collapsing.
3. They struggle to keep bank accounts open for both Tether and Bitfinex, HSBC kicked them out, UBS too, Wells Fargo as well. This got so bad at some point they had to resort to using an unlicensed bank in the Bahamas to prevent liquidity problems. They resorted to opening shell companies with fake business plans in order to access bank accounts, often lying to the banks about their business activities. They even asked their customers making cash withdrawals to not communicate to their bank about the company being a crypto exchange by fear of having their accounts closed. Anyone who operates a business this way is a fraudster. This was exposed a few years back but no one bothered to care, most crypto actors shrugged it off fearing that throwing oil at the fire would only contribute to killing the market faster.
4. The ownership of those companies is very obscure and the people you see in public are mostly pawns and employees. To this day the company has so many entities across the globe that identifying a UBO is still a challenge even for the regulators.
5. They used the same shady panamanian payment processor several crypto scams used in the past, from QuadrigaCX (Owned "died" in india 2 weeks after writing his will and 265m CAD vanished before the market went parabolic) to several european based crypto ventures that went bust.
6. The only bank that "attested" reserves for Tether was Noble Bank in Puerto Rico, CEO had a history of forgery and cooking books and the bank went under so without a real audit this claim is dubious at best.
7. They represent such a systemic risk that even Binance CEO CZ had to intervene in 2018 to reassure people and delay the runs we see today on exchanges. He claimed he met with in the background with Tether and verified himself that USDT was fully backed although he never provided proof. He was seeking to control the backlash more than showing the truth because most chinese exchanges run exclusively on Tether, without it they're insolvent. This is why CZ spent the next 4 years heavily investing in his BNB ecosystem (Even breaking several laws in the process to make it a success), to provide a counter balance to the exchange's dependency on Tether.