Bloomberg: US watchdog investigates Bitfinex exchange and Tether – update

According to a source from Bloomberg news agency, the American watchdog CFTC is investigating the exchange Bitfinex and its affiliated company Tether. An audit of Tether recently fell through.

The anonymous Bloomberg source tells the news agency that the watchdog sent subpoenas, or subpoenas, to the companies on December 6. They don’t want to answer questions from Bloomberg. They only say that they regularly receive requests from regulators and that they do not specifically respond to them.

The news agency writes that the value of all outstanding Tether tokens is now $2.3 billion and that the company claims that it has the same amount in dollars. Skeptics would doubt this claim, as no evidence has been released. Tether is a cryptocurrency that claims to be stable because it is linked to traditional currencies such as the dollar or the euro. Therefore, the value of 1 Tether would correspond to that of 1 dollar.

The exchange Bitfinex and Tether share a joint CEO, named Jan Ludovicus van der Velde, according to Bloomberg. However, there are no public documents about the management of the companies and where exactly they are located. The leaked Paradise Papers would also show that a Tether CEO also fulfills a high position at Bitfinex. On the exchange it is possible to buy bitcoin with Tether, or usdt.

American accountancy firm Friedman was originally supposed to audit Tether, but the partnership between the companies recently came to an end. Tether wrote in a statement that “Friedman used extremely precise procedures for a relatively simple balance sheet, which made an audit not feasible in a reasonable time frame.”

Update, 21:10: Bloomberg amended its article after publication and now writes that the subpoenas were sent on December 6 and not last week. This article has been edited.