New reports today at Cointelegraph show that various plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against Tether and Bitfinex are not backing down in their bid to gain from the alleged BTC manipulation of defendants.
A reported court filing yesterday confirmed the ongoing accusation, which is that some anonymous whale counterparty purchased large amounts of Bitcoin with Tether, leading to Bitcoin’s historically high values near $20,000 in 2017, and that the party in question colluded with Bitfinex to do so.
In response, Bitfinex has taken aim at the authors of a paper theorizing those happenings, stating through spokespersons:
“To obtain publication, Griffin and Shams have released a weakened yet equally flawed version of their prior article. The revised paper is a watered-down and embarrassing walk-back of its predecessor.”
More recently, Bitfinex has been firing back on its own announcements page, too, as in this timeline:
October 5:
“We fully expect mercenary lawyers to use this deeply flawed paper to solicit plaintiffs for an opportunistic lawsuit, which may have been the true motive of the paper all along. In fact, we would not be surprised if just such a lawsuit will be filed imminently.”
November 7:
“The purported conclusions reached by the authors are built on a house of cards that suffers from the absence of a complete dataset.”
November 15:
“Today, Bitfinex advised the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York of its intention to file a motion to dismiss the frivolous class action lawsuit filed last month. The motion will allege that many of Plaintiffs’ causes of action lack the required legal basis to proceed past the very early stage of the case. There are several reasons to look at the Plaintiffs’ claims with a jaundiced eye … Bitfinex looks forward to putting the true facts before the court at this stage and throughout the proceedings. The Plaintiffs continue to act in a way that undermines the many contributions of thousands of members of the digital token economy. Bitfinex will vigorously contest Plaintiffs claims and relentlessly defend itself, its customers and stakeholders, and the cryptocurrency community…”
November 24:
“These absurd and groundless accusations are an attack on the growth, success and innovation of the entire digital token ecosystem, in which Bitfinex is proud to play a critical role. Meritless lawsuits like these are a continuing affront to the efforts and dedication of Bitfinex’s customers and all participants in the digital currency ecosystem. Our fight is the community’s fight.”
As for a case brought by the New York Attorney General Letitia James in April accusing Bitfinex of losing $800 million in funds and hiding it in Tether values, the defendants seem to have won a stay from justice Joel Cohen as of September.
The new class action adds fuel to the fire – the civil case piles onto the already tumultuous AG prosecution.
We’ll see where both of these go.