Bitfinex and Tether have finally settled a long-standing 2-year dispute with the New York Attorney General’s office for $18.5 million, ameliorating all concerns over the number one USD Stablecoin, Tether.

• Crypto firms Bitfinex and Tether have settled with the New York Attorney General’s (NYAG’s) office over a case that began about two years ago.
• Bitfinex and Tether admit no wrongdoing and have agreed to pay $18.5 million as part of the settlement.

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Crypto firms Bitfinex and Tether have settled with the New York Attorney General’s (NYAG’s) office, ending a long-standing legal dispute that began in 2019.

As part of the settlement, Bitfinex and Tether will pay $18.5 million, per a statement from New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Back in April 2019, the NYAG’s office alleged that Bitfinex usd Tether funds to secretly cover $850 million, which allegedly triggered withdrawal problems for Bitfinex’s customers in 2018.

At the time, Bitfinex said it hadn’t lost money and instead that Crypto Capital’s funds had been seized by government authorities in Portugal, Poland and that Bitfinex had been looking to recover said funds.

Today, this story is officially dead and buried in the crypto history books.

As part of the settlement, Bitfinex and Tether admit to no wrongdoing. Jason Weinstein, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson and counsel to Bitfinex and Tether, told The Block that the NYAG office’s findings are “limited only to the nature and timing of certain disclosures.”

“Contrary to online speculation, there was no finding that Tether ever issued tethers [USDT] without backing, or to manipulate crypto prices,” said Weinstein, an  ex-federal prosecutor.

General counsel of Bitfienx and Tether, Stuart Hoegner said that the settlement should be seen “as a measure of our desire to put this matter behind us and focus on our business.”

As part of the settlement agreement, Tether volunteered to provide the NYAG’s office and the public a quarterly update on USDT’s reserves backing, a recommendation. “We share the Attorney General’s goal of increasing transparency,” Hoegner said. “We would disclose — both to the Attorney General’s Office and to the public — additional information about Tether’s reserves on a quarterly basis.”

Finally, the NYAG’s office also acknowledged Bitfinex’s recent loan repayment to Tether. Earlier this month, Bitfinex announced that it repaid Tether the remaining loan balance of $550 million and closed the credit line.

With the settlement of the largest legal dispute in crypto coming to a close, Bitfinex and Tether say they have provided over 2.5 million pages of documentation to the NYAG’s office to seal off the matter entirely.

At the time of writing, the USDT market cap stands at $35 billion, up $5 billion in 2 weeks.

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