Tether Responds to Claims it Blocked Accounts of Major Crypto Firms

Tether, the issuer of the recently de-pegged stablecoin USDT has finally responded to some issues arising per its operational decisions. 

Matters Arising and Tether’s Response

According to details in the released documents by the New York Attorney General (NYAG), the stablecoin issuer reportedly deactivated up to 29 accounts owned by top crypto players two years ago. It appears to be that most of the names on the list had their account terminated for different reasons.

These reasons were not plainly stated but at the same time, Tether responded by stating that it does “not want to comment on any individual relationship, but everyone did pass the strict compliance checks at onboarding and ongoing monitoring required by Tether’s compliance policies.”

Some of these accounts belonged to the likes of crypto trading platform MoonPay, embattled crypto lending firm BlockFi, crypto investment firm CMS Holdings and the now-shuttered crypto hedge fund Galois Capital. 

Noteworthy, the NYAG’s investigation ended as far back as February 2021 but it was discovered that some of the documents are dated further till around June of the same year. Their user codes have already been redacted. 

Tether Saga With NYAG

The Office of the New York Attorney General gathered these documents during its investigation into Tether and its sister company Bitfinex for the misappropriation of $850 million funds. During this time, iFinex, the parent company of both entities, requested a 30-day extension to produce the critical financial documents before NYAG a few days to the expiration of the previously scheduled date. 

In the end, the parties involved reached a settlement of $18.5 million as a penalty in addition to suspending trading activities in New York. 

Thereafter, media houses including Coinbase approached NYAG requesting public disclosure of their first quarterly report under Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) but Tether raised an objection against the move. Tether claimed that it was trying to protect its customers’ confidential data which could be “exploited by malicious actors.”

However, along the line, NYAG gave the media houses access to the documents in order to prove its commitment to transparency and openness and the deactivation of many crypto company’s account comes off as one of the matters that has been uncovered thus far.