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- The Commodity Futures Trading Commission issues an order filing and settling charges against Tether Holdings, Tether Limited, Tether Operations and Tether International, in addition to a separate order against iFinex, BFXNA and BFXWW, in connection with their operation of the Bitfinex crypto trading platform
- Tether is getting fined because it made untrue or misleading claims that Tether (USDT-USD) stablecoin is fully backed by the U.S. dollar; the order requires Tether to pay a civil monetary penalty of $41M.
- Bitfinex is required to pay a $1.5M penalty after the CFTC found that the company engaged in illegal, off-exchange retail commodity transactions in digital assets with U.S. persons on the Bitfinex trading platform, and operated as a futures commission merchant without registering as required.
- "The CFTC will also act to ensure that certain mergined, leveraged or financed digital asset trading offered to retail U.S. customers must occur on properly registered and regulated exchanges," the CFTC said in the release.
- Previously, (January 5, 2018) CFTC to explore crypto self-certification.