Tether in 'Open Dialogue' with DOJ, says Company on Report of its Executives Being Under Probe for Bank Fraud

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is probing into the largest stablecoin regarding whether the executive behind it committed bank fraud during the early stages of its business, reported Bloomberg on Monday, citing three people with direct knowledge of the matter. The agency will be looking into events from several years ago when Tether was launched in 2014 and examine whether the company concealed from banks that its transactions were linked to crypto. The charge of bank fraud would make it a potential criminal case, and the formal charges could be brought in the coming weeks. In response, Tether said it

“routinely has open dialogue with law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, as part of our commitment to cooperation, transparency, and accountability.”

Tether blasted Bloomberg’s report as “repackaging stale claims” from years ago to “generate clicks,” adding that it is business as usual for the company. As of writing, Tether has a circulating supply of 62.15 billion, out of which nearly $31 billion is on Ethereum blockchain and almost $32 billion on Tron while the rest is spread across Solana, Omni, EOS, Liquid, Algorand, and SLP. In total, stablecoins are all set to hit $112 billion in supply after starting 2021, around $29 billion. Tether accounts for 57.8% of this total market cap, followed by USDC, whose growing market share has reached 24.16%, and then BUSD at 10.54%. A couple of months back, Tether released its quarterly report as part of the settlement deal with NYAG that revealed that 75.85% of Tether is backed by cash & cash equivalents. “NYAG found we made mistakes in our disclosures re: 1-to-1 backing with dollars only. Those disclosures were rectified within just over 3 months,” said Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether and its sister company Bitfinex in response to Zero Hedge’s article” What Effect Would Tether Being A Complete Fraud Have On Cryptos?” Earlier this month, the company behind USDT, Tether Operations, posted a job for a reputation manager that will “advocate” for the company in social media spaces and maintain a positive sentiment for the brand.