Bitfinex and Tether responds to consolidated class action lawsuit

Bitfinex and Tether have rejected allegations made in an amended consolidated class action lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York.

The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday and alleged that Bitfinex has “executed a sophisticated scheme to fraudulently inflate the price of cryptocurrencies”.

It also claimed that “billions” of Tether tokens were issued despite not being backed by physical US Dollars.

Stuart Hoegner, General Counsel for Bitfinex, said: “Even after taking three full months to amend their complaint, the plaintiffs’ allegations remain untethered to either the facts or the law. They conflate perceived correlation with causation in an effort to prop up theories that are untrue and unsupportable.”

In a press release shared with Coin Rivet, Bitfinex claim that “the only consistency in their arguments is the complete lack of evidence”.

“While suggesting the sheer size of the demand for Tether coupled with changes in the market clearly led to only one conclusion – market manipulation – plaintiffs disregarded the actual workings and financial backing of Tether, the operations of Bitfinex, general principles of supply and demand, and publicly available research that confirms there was no manipulation,” confirmed Hoegner. “If you see a group of people opening umbrellas, that doesn’t mean that they caused it to rain.”

“Tether is proud to play a critical role in the digital token ecosystem. This meritless lawsuit is 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.” He concluded.

Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino recently told Coin Rivet how scepticism of Tether was “completely baseless”.

“We have seen support from the entire community. At one point one of the accusations from the University of Texas was that one single whale in Bitfinex caused the entire bull run.” Ardoino said.

“You don’t have to be a genius to understand that that’s a crazy allegation.”

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