[The Exiled]

Tether will pay $41 million over ‘misleading’ claims it was fully backed by US dollars

Tether will pay $41 million to settle allegations by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that it made untrue or misleading statements when it claimed its stablecoins were fully backed by fiat currencies. The CFTC said in a statement Friday that between June 2016 and February 2019, Tether misrepresented to customers and the cryptocurrencies markets that it had “sufficient US dollar reserves” to back every token when, in fact, its reserves were not fully backed the majority of the time. In addition, the CFTC said, Tether failed to disclose that it included unsecured receivables and non-fiat assets as part of its reserves, falsely telling investors it would conduct routine audits to show it maintained 100 percent of reserves at all times, even though its reserves were not audited.

Tether held sufficient fiat reserves in its accounts to back USDT tether tokens in circulation for only 27.6% of the days in a 26-month sample time period from 2016 through 2018. The order also finds that, instead of holding all USDT token reserves in U.S. dollars as represented, Tether relied upon unregulated entities and certain third-parties to hold funds comprising the reserves; comingled reserve funds with Bitfinex’s operational and customer funds; and held reserves in non-fiat financial products. In addition, the order finds that Tether failed to complete routine, professional audits during the relevant time period.

Izvor: CFTC