Bitfinex and Tether have denied all allegations featured in an amended class action lawsuit filed against their parent company, iFinex Inc, according to a blog post published today by Bitfinex. The updated lawsuit, filed on June 3 in the Southern District of New York, accuses Bitfinex, Tether, Poloniex and affiliated firms of allegedly manipulating the crypto market. The initial lawsuit was filed in October 2019. The 156-page claim mentions Matthew Script, Benjamin Leibowitz, Jason Leibowitz, Aaron Leibowitz, and Pinchas Goldshtein as plaintiffs. They are represented by Selendy & Gay PLLC, Roche Cyrulink Freedman LLP and Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky LLP. …

The plaintiffs behind a class-action alleging that Bittrex and Tether drove the 2017 bull run through market manipulation have requested the issuance of summons to exchanges Bittrex and Poloniex. The lawsuit, first filed in October 2019, alleges that veteran cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and its sister company Tether inflated the supply of Tether’s USDT stablecoin without proper US dollar backing to drive up crypto prices during 2017’s all-time high. The suit is on behalf of investors who purchased crypto assets at what they believe are artificially inflated prices. The Plaintiffs have requested that the Court award reasonable costs of suit, pre- …

The latest report from Bloomberg reveals that the company expects Bitcoin (BTC) to retest the record highs from 2017, and may even go as high as $28,000. COVID-19 and institutions helping Bitcoin The report suggests that COVID-19 has accelerated Bitcoin’s maturation as an asset, showing its strength amid declining equities. In addition, it points to the ever-increasing appetite from institutional investors, and Grayscale, or GBTC, in particular, which has been consuming about 25% of the the new supply: “So far this year, its increasing AUM has consumed about 25% of new Bitcoin-mined coins vs. less than 10% in 2019. Our …

Uri Kolodny, co-founder and CEO of blockchain firm StarkWare, told Cointelegraph that Ethereum second-layer scalability solutions still need some work. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin claimed on June 1 that the blockchain’s layer-two scaling initial deployment has “basically” succeeded. Kolodny — on the other hand — told Cointelegraph that he is not as convinced: “I wouldn't pop the champagne bottles just yet, as many of these proposed solutions have at this point been deployed only on Twitter, not on Ethereum Mainnet.” Kolodny admitted that there are many promising developments when it comes to second-layer Ethereum scalability solutions. He explained that “there …

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that the blockchain’s layer-two scaling initial deployment has “basically” succeeded. In a June 1 tweet, Buterin claimed that most of the initial work on Ethereum’s second-level scalability solutions is nearly complete. To back his claim, Buterin linked to a tweet by Ethereum researcher Philippe Castonguay who listed a number of relevant developments and second-layer Ethereum scalability solutions that have recently launched. Castonguay noted that blockchain development firm StarkWare launched its second-layer scalability solution, as did blockchain company LoopRing. According to StarkWare, their second-layer solution attempts to address both scalability and privacy limitations on the blockchains …

Bitfinex’s Tether (USDT) stablecoin is now available on the OMG Network, a plasma-based Ethereum sidechain launched on June 1 by the project formerly known as OmiseGo. The integration, also announced on June 1, marks the first time that Tether integrated an Ethereum sidechain to boost its performance. Tether is by far the largest “gas guzzler” on the Ethereum network at 8,900 ETH (about $1.84 million) in fees spent last month, according to ETH Gas Station. This is more than the next five protocols combined, one of which is reportedly a Ponzi scheme. By delegating some of that volume to the …

Tether (USDT) cites the popularity of its Ethereum (ETH)-based asset as the reason why the company has never burned a single token. The recent report from Flipside Crypto concluded that Tether is not in the practice of burning its Ethereum tokens: “We can also see that no tokens ever go to the “burn” category, which means that throughout the course of April no USDT supply was destroyed. Looking at the full history of USDT on Ethereum, we found that no tokens have ever been burned.” Ethereum is too popular Paolo Ardoino, who serves as CTO for both Tether and Bitfinex, …

Celsius Network is expanding its partnership with fiat-to-crypto payments provider, Simplex, by enabling its users to buy more crypto with credit and debit cards. Celsius, a major crypto lending startup, now allows its users to purchase gold-backed stablecoin Tether Gold (XAUT) using debit and credit cards. Announcing the news on May 28, Celsius said that the minimum purchase amount for XAUT is $50, while the annual interest rate accounts for 4%. Tether Gold was rolled out for depositing on Celsius app earlier in May Alongside Tether Gold, the new integration with Simplex also unlocks credit and debit card purchases for …

Tether (USDT) usage in decentralized finance (DeFi) appears to be growing, as lending protocol Aave reports over $7.2 million in USDT locked, out of a reported $60 million in total assets. This result comes two months after the initial launch of Tether on the platform, which offers a wide range of other stablecoins including Dai (DAI), USD Coin (USDC), sUSD and TrueUSD (TUSD). Tether says that a notable portion of that usage is made of flash loans, a loan that does not require collateral as long as it’s returned in the same block. The interest rate on depositing Tether is …

A report from Flipside Crypto indicates that no Ethereum (ETH)-based Tether (USDT) tokens have ever been burned. The report has also come to a conclusion that the stablecoin is mostly used by arbitrageurs on centralized exchanges. The Flow of USDT Within A Crypto Ecosystem. Source: Flipside Crypto. Binance, Bitfinex & Huobi The report states that Tether has thus far failed to fulfill its aspiration of providing stability to the DeFi space as postulated by Paolo Ardoino, Bitfinex and Tether’s CTO. Instead, its primary use case, seems to be inter-exchange arbitrage: “It’s pretty clear that most of Tether is used on …

Earlier this week, Tether (USDT) was making headlines for flippening XRP and taking the number three spot for largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Confidence in the leading stablecoin seems to have returned, despite Tether and Bitfinex still being embroiled in two ongoing court proceedings — one of which relates to an $850 million cash loan made by Tether to Bitfinex, secured against Bitfinex stock. Investors didn’t like the fact that their Tether was no longer backed one-to-one with dollars. But with United States banks now allowed to issue loans with zero reserve, were the shares actually a better option? Tether …

Tether (USDT) has overtaken XRP to become the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, as Ripple fails to gain adoption amongst retail investors. Top 10 Cryptocurrencies by Market Capitalization. Source: CoinMarketCap As for Ripple (XRP), it's been a race to the bottom, its market cap has collapsed from a high around $130 billion in January 2018 to the current one under $9 billion. At one point XRP was jockeying for the number two position with Ether (ETH), however, currently, the combined market cap of XRP and USDT is still $5 billion behind Ether. USDT vs. XRP market capitalization. Source: Cointelegraph, …