Bitfinex news

A New York judge ruled Bitfinex must face the fraud suit and impending investigation set against it in April by New York attorney general Letitia James, denying the company’s request for the case to be dismissed due to lack of jurisdiction, Bloomberg reported. Justice Joel M. Cohen said Monday that iFinex Inc., the Hong Kong-based parent company of Bitfinex and Tether, will be tried for James’s allegations that it used $900 million worth of Tether USDT reserves to fraudulently cover an $850 million loss of “co-mingled client and corporate funds”. Per Cohen’s ruling, the Attorney General will also have access to information blocked by a temporary hold won in court by iFinex in May. Questions of jurisdiction resolved The verdict comes as a moment of resolution in a months-long legal clash between Bitfinex and the Office of the New York Attorney General (OAG), who since launching an injunction in April has pursued the company under New York’s Martin Act. Under the act, the Attorney General is granted “broad powers”  to prosecute for securities and commodities laws violations in the famously stern jurisdiction of New York. The OAG has endeavored through a series of attempts to prove Bitfinex has been operating on its turf, and in early July produced 28 pieces of evidence intended to prove the exchange served New York customers between 2017 and 2019. Bitfinex has repeatedly challenged the authority of the OAG to prosecute on the supposed grounds it never served residents of New York, and in late July hit back with a legal filing stating that the only New York-based customers served by the exchange were trading through “foreign entities” and thus that the claims of the OAG were “misleading”. Bitfinex not giving up without a fight The latest ruling confirms Bitfinex will face arguably one of the most imposing legal adversaries in finance, and yet the firm has said it is prepared to continue to defend itself in court. According to a response to the ruling on the Bitfinex blog, the exchange maintains innocence on all counts, and has firmly dismissed the Attorney General’s claims as “meritless.” “While we are disappointed in the decision on our motion to dismiss, we will continue to vigorously defend against any action by the New York Attorney General’s office. We look forward to the opportunity to pursue these issues further in the appellate court.” … “Any assertion that we have misled our customers about Tether (USDt), its backing, or about the negotiated transaction between Bitfinex and Tether is false. We remain committed, as ever, to protecting our customers, our business, and our community against the Attorney General’s meritless claims.” Legal proceedings involving USDT, the largest USD-pegged stablecoin with a $4 billion market capitalization, could have catastrophic implications on the cryptocurrency markets. Further action against Bitfinex could also jeopardize the exchange’s native token, LEO, which the attorney general claimed could constitute an unregistered security. The post Bitfinex must face New York attorney general in fraud lawsuit, says judge appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitfinex and Tether respond to judge’s ruling that the New York Attorney General has jurisdiction in the ongoing case against them

iFinex, the company behind Bitfinex, is under more pressure after the New York State Supreme Court judged that the exchange was in the New York Attorney-General’s (NYAG) Office’s jurisdiction. But that isn’t getting in the way of business: yesterday, Bitfinex completed its burn of nearly 40,000 LEO tokens (US$53,600), as part of a continuous process that will eventually redeem the entire supply. Bitfinex launched UNUS SED LEO (LEO) on May 20 this year, apparently to cover a cash shortfall of $850 million which were allegedly seized by Portuguese, American, and Polish authorities from Crypto Capital Corp. Each of the billion LEO tokens will eventually be bought back and burned under Bitfinex’s UNUS SED LEO Transparency Initiative.  Here’s how the process works. The Leo, The Screaming Buy, and Unfinexed Business LEO tokens, launched for a price of $1 each, have performed fairly well in an underwhelming market. Now hovering around $1.34 per Coinmarketcap, they are hardly a screaming buy. But a 34 percent gain in a few months is nothing to be sneezed at. UNUS SED LEO is Latin, presumably meaning “I swear all Tether tokens are fully back by….” To date, almost five million LEO tokens have been burned in on-chain burning events. From appearances at least, Bitfinex’s owners plan to operate LEO with greater transparency than they have shown with tether. Burn transactions can be viewed on an EOS block explorer.  It’s All About Tokenomics Crypto Briefing recently explored LEO tokens. There are a number of positive features that make them potentially savvy trades. Firstly, the token burn is conducted directly on the market. Binance, by comparison, burns BNB from directly inside their treasury.  In 2018, iFinex made a net profit of over $400 million, according to its LEO whitepaper. That figure is roughly the same as estimates for Binance’s revenues for the same period. (It must be said that this figure is extrapolated backward from the giant’s token burn amounts.)   Via Leo.bitfinex.com   Bitfinex burns tokens every three hours, according to the countdown timer on its website. However, verifying that these tokens represent the correct proportion of exchange revenues is a different story. Bitfinex says it intends to burn 100 percent of the supply of LEO. By comparison Binance only plans to burn half of all BNB. Bitfinex spends 27 percent of its quarterly revenue burning LEO tokens compared to Binance’s BNB burn of 20 percent of quarterly profit. Margins come into play in the mathematics here, but in theory, LEO coins will be burned at a more aggressive pace than Binance’s native tokens. Bitfinex Turns on the Charm Exchange tokens have more obvious and immediate utility than most altcoins, many of which are struggling to demonstrate a use-case. To Bitfinex’s credit, they may have accepted that LEO’s success will require them to engage in a charm offensive to reverse years of mistrust. Per the company: “We have decided upon a continuous burning mechanism – verifiable and in real-time – to keep the process as fair as possible for our users. As our revenues flow in continuously, we felt that the fairest approach to token buybacks would be one built around continuous and constant redemptions. We are doing this to remove the possibility of uncertainty from LEO holders, subsequently allowing our community to track iFinex revenues, as well as LEO token burn quantities, in an open manner.”Bitfinex LEO so far is on track to achieve its purpose for Bitfinex (in terms of cash flow) and for its customers (in terms of the burn schedule). What appeared an extremely risky proposition in May – buying exchange tokens in an IEO from the dark horse of crypto exchanges – has turned out to be a handy bet. However, Bitfinex’s reputation for opacity suggests it is not without risks..  To believe in the profitability of LEO is to trust Bitfinex, at least in the short term, not to re-release burned tokens and not to go out of business. Given its history of, and propensity for, opacity, all Bitfinex assertions need to be taken Cum Grano Salis.   The post Bitfinex Feels The Heat, But LEO Is Burning As Planned appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

https://ToneVays.com by @ToneVays https://twitter.com/ToneVays Trading Alerts for Sequential (Free till Sep): https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAE4Hy84LAsx7HaRgSg For Serious Traders & Investors: https://thefinancialsummit.com/ Please Support via Affiliate Codes: eToro Affiliate for US persons: http://partners.etoro.com/B11515_A80104_TClick.aspx eToro Affiliate for Non-US Persons http://partners.etoro.com/B10521_A80066_TClick.aspx Unlimited Trading for $9 a Month at LVL: https://lvl.co/?r=kDpHhBmS Deribit to save 10% on Trading: https://www.deribit.com/reg-3221.4686 Buy/Sell Bitcoin at Paxful: https://paxful.com/?r=or4dNEDBBQX Trading View: http://tradingview.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=2&aff_id=4905&url_id=3 TorGuard VPN 50% off code & link = tone50: https://torguard.net/aff.php?aff=3782 Ugly's Lifetime Subscription: https://uglyoldgoat.com/?rid=4xyuzu Audio Podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tone-vays-podcast/id1390209454?mt=2 See Regulation overview in each state here: https://www.carltonfields.com/state-regulations-on-virtual-currency-and-blockchain-technologies/ Tone Vays is available for Corporate Consulting at the rate of 0.3 btc per hour. Please email Tone@protonmail.ch for additional info.

The Supreme Court of the State of New York has denied the motion of iFinex, the company behind the exchange Bitfinex and stablecoin Tether, for a temporary stay on the NYAG investigation. The company was seeking to terminate the investigation on the grounds that the court lacks “personal and subject matter jurisdiction” because Bitfinex is […]