New York Appeals Court, Prosecutors, and Tether

The appellate division of New York’s Supreme Court made the decision that could have a serious impact on tether cryptocurrency. Importantly a New York appeals court unleashed the New York State’s attorney general to investigate several businesses behind this cryptocurrency.

The respondents including both Tether Holdings Limited and The Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange wanted to dismiss subpoenas, before appealing. However, respondents were unable to reach their goals. At the moment, there are no formal accusations of fraud or illegal activities.

Interestingly, the creator of this cryptocurrency Brock Pierce made an interesting announcement. According to Pierce, he was running for President of the United States. However, a representative of the New York State Attorney General neither confirmed nor denied that investigation also includes the creator of this cryptocurrency.

Pierce created this cryptocurrency in 2014. Notably, he created the tether currency as a way for crypto investors to quickly enter as well as exit a position. Moreover, unlike Bitcoin which is the biggest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization and other cryptocurrencies, tether was meant to have a stable price backed by one-to-one by real U.S. dollars.

Tether and legal aspects

Importantly, in 2018 questions about whether or not the cryptocurrency was actually backed dollar-to-dollar started to circulate and a predecessor of the state attorney general of New York, Letitia James made the decision to launch the investigation.

Tether, as well as Bitfinex, filed an appeal resulting in a temporary halt of the investigation. However, thanks to the opinion order the investigation can resume. It is worth mentioning that, the outcome of this investigation could impact any of the countless owners of the cryptocurrency. This cryptocurrency has a market value of $10 billion.

Officially, the case involves BFXNA Inc. and BFXWW Inc. wholly-owned subsidiaries of iFinex. As a reminder, iFinex operates the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange as well as Tether Holdings Limited. Moreover, Tether Holdings Limited is the holding company for Tether Limited, Tether Operations Limited, and Tether International Limited.