Controversial Bitcoin Exchange Bitfinex Opens Bank Account with ING
Bitcoin Exchange Bitfinex has been recently embroiled in controversy over its alleged ties with startup Tether, who is accused of rising unaccounted USDT tokens and issuing them to Bitfinex for manipulating the price of Bitcoin in the crypto markets.
Many analysts have openly criticized the suspicious operations of Tether and Bitfinex and have also said that any wrong-doing if caught, can have a massive impact of a price fall in the crypto market. Due to its suspicious nature of operation of Bitfinex, it along with Tether also received subpoenas from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Dec. 6, 2017.
However, in spite of being in a heavy scrutiny, the cryptocurrency exchange has recently opened a bank account with one of the most popular banks ING in the Netherlands. This has been confirmed by ING spokesperson Harold Reusken who has refused to further comment on the matter citing issues with customer confidentiality. However, Reusken has said that the bank takes extra precautions and conducts due diligence especially in matters associated with cryptocurrency transactions.
Bitfinex’s new association with this global banking institution ING has certainly raised eyebrows of many financial professionals as the decentralized and non-regulated crypto exchanges usually provide very little information about its financial operations. Moreover, this new relationship raises a lot of questions as another popular bank Wells Fargo discontinued its relationship with Bitfinex back in April 2017.
In spite of all the growing skepticism in its operations, Tether and Bitfinex have refused to make any comment in the public justifying their position which has caused the criticism to rage further. On the contrary, Tether also discontinued its ties with audit firm Freidman LLP after a feud between the two companies.
With all this going on around the corner, Henk Nijboer a member of the opposition Labour Party in the Dutch Parliament, has asked the country’s finance minister to clarify about ING’s involvement with Bitfinex.
On Tuesday, Tether has about $2.2 billion USDT tokens being circulated and is currently the second most traded cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, in the crypto markets. The Tether controversy continues to grow further as the market-cap of USDT tokens continues to grow despite no audit and lack of substantial proof that the tokens are fully backed by U.S Dollars.
However, in a statement to Bloomberg, Tether and Bitfinex have said that they routinely perform the legal process from regulators and law enforcement conducting investigations, and stated that their policy is not to comment on such matters. They further stated that they would also pursue legal actions against those who are making “patently false” claims about the company.