Tether, the controversial issuer of the USDT cryptocurrency, may have found a new banking partner in the Bahamas.
Tether May Have a New Bank
As first reported by The Block’s Larry Cermak, Tether — whose USD-pegged cryptocurrency has a market cap in the billions of dollars — is said to be holding its fiat reserves at Deltec Bank, which is based out of Nassau.
Those reserves, according to the company, are quite large. As of Tuesday morning, there are more than 2.25 billion USDT tokens in circulation, representing $2.25 billion in physical assets. At one point, USDT was worth nearly $2.9 billion, though hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency token has been yanked out of circulation in October.
Bitfinex Unveils ‘Distributed Banking Solution’
Tether reportedly shares a management team with cryptocurrency exchange giant Bitfinex, and, concurrent with Cermak’s report on the stablecoin issuer’s new banking partner, Bitfinex introduced a “new, improved and increasingly resilient fiat depositing system” that utilizes a “distributed banking solution.”
Previously, both Bitfinex and Tether were said to be holding assets at Noble Bank, a financial institution located in Puerto Rico. However, Noble Bank is now reportedly up for sale as the result of monetary struggles of its own.
Bitfinex did not reveal any details about its new banking partner(s). However, screenshots allegedly taken from within the new fiat deposit system suggest that the exchange does not want this information to become public.
“This banking information is being provided to you for purposes of contributing good faith funding to your account on Bitfinex,” reads the message in the screenshot posted by widely-followed cryptocurrency investor WhalePanda. “This banking information is commercially sensitive and confidential. You should be very careful with this information. You are asked to keep this information to yourself and to not share it except with your financial institution. Divulging this information could damage not just yourself and Bitfinex, but the entire digital token ecosystem. Accordingly, you are cautioned that there may be serious negative effects associated with this information becoming public.”
As CCN reported, the tether price has slipped below the $1.00 mark in recent days, perhaps in part due to lingering concerns over the long-term ability to redeem USDT for physical currency. After slipping as low as $0.92 on Monday, tether’s global average had recovered to about $0.98 by the time of writing.
A Tether representative did not immediately respond to CCN’s request for confirmation on its alleged banking relationship with Deltec.
Featured Image from Shutterstock
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