Tether to report reserves and pay $18.5M fine after settlement with NYAG

New York regulators are forcing Tether to be fully transparent about its reserves, at the cost of not serving New York residents.

Bitfinex and Tether settled with the New York Attorney General office in the landmark case against Tether. New York authorities alleged that Tether misrepresented the degree to which USDT coins were backed by fiat collateral.

The settlement requires Bitfinex and Tether pay $18.5 million for damages to the New York state, as well as submit to periodic reporting of their reserves. The terms of the settlement mandate Bitfinex and Tether to report their current reserve status, any transaction between the two companies, as well as provide public reports for the specific composition of their cash and non-cash reserves. The reports will need to be submitted each quarter for the next two years.

Finally, the settlement also requires Bitfinex and Tether to stop servicing customers in the state of New York.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the lawsuit by the NYAG alleged that Tethers were not fully backed by reserves at certain times. Specifically, Bitfinex is alleged to have opened a line of credit with Tether to repay an $850 million shortfall from the failure of its former partner, Crypto Capital Corp. The line of credit has since been closed, as reported by Tether and confirmed by the authorities. While the documents make specific claims as for the status of Tether reserves in 2017 and 2018, the regulators did not seem to have any reservations of Tether’s reserve status in 2021.

The settlement fine of $18.5 million is by now a very small portion of all existing USDT, which are now almost $35 billion.

Cointelegraph reached out to Tether for comment, but did not immediately receive a response. The article will be updated should a reply come through.