(Reuters) – Tether will pay $41 million to U.S. regulators over misleading claims about its cryptocurrency stablecoin and cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex will pay $1.5 million for illegal transactions, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday.
Tether Holdings Limited, Tether Limited, Tether Operations Limited, and Tether International agreed to pay the civil monetary penalty to settle CFTC charges they had made untrue or misleading statements and omission of material facts about the U.S. dollar tether token stablecoin being fully backed by U.S. dollars, the CFTC said in a statement.
In a separate settlement, iFinex Inc, BFXNA Inc, and BFXWW Inc agreed to pay a penalty to settle charges related to their operation of the Bitfinex cryptocurrency trading platform. The CFTC said the firm exchanged in illegal, off-exchange retail commodity transactions in digital assets and operated as a futures commission merchant without registering.
Neither company admitted nor denied the CFTC’s findings or responded immediately to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Chris Prentice; Editing by Paul Simao)
