Tether Receives Ransom Demand – Pay 500 BTC or Documents Will be Leaked

Tether publicly announced on March 1st that they received a ransom demand for 500 BTC ($24 Million USD) with the threat being a leak of documents aimed at harming the Bitcoin ecosystem.

They stated that they will not pay the ransom and the communications have been reported to law enforcement.

There have been rumours that documents and emails are circulating, revealing sensitive data about the USDT stablecoin, however Tether have declared that these documents are forged.

We’ve also seen the Tether marketcap grow from 4 Billion to 34 Billion in the past few months causing concerns amongst the crypto community in regards to the 1-to-1 backing against the US Dollar.

New York Court Case with Bitfinex

This ransom demand to Tether follows the news that they agreed to pay an agreed $18.5M settlements for a recent New York court case.

In a statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James said, “Bitfinex and Tether recklessly and unlawfully covered up massive financial losses to keep their scheme going and protect their bottom lines. Tether’s claims that its virtual currency was fully backed by U.S. dollars at all times was a lie.”

And the settlement statement said: “As of Nov. 2, 2018, tethers were again no longer backed 1-to-1 by U.S. dollars in a Tether bank account, because a substantial portion of the backing in the Deltec account had been transferred to Bitfinex to make up for the funds taken by Crypto Capital, while the corresponding funds transferred from Bitfinex’s Crypto Capital account to Tether’s Crypto Capital account were impaired by Crypto Capital’s actions.”