At the start of October, New York-based legal firm Roche Freedman filed a new class-action lawsuit against stablecoin firm Tether and digital currency exchange Bitfinex. The case accuses the aforementioned entities of manipulating the market by using a host of sophisticated schemes that involved fraud, pump-and-dump schemes, as well as certain money laundering-related ploys. As a result of this legal drama, the USDT/BTC trade pair has witnessed a substantial decline in its market value (around 10% as of press time).
As per the lawsuit, the legal team over at Roche Freedman has argued that Tether’s claim of all its Tether tokens (USDT) being backed by equal amounts of United States dollars is a blatant lie. The case also claims that the firm has continually been issuing massive amounts of unbacked USDT in order to manipulate the price of not only its native crypto offering but also the digital asset market at large. In this regard, the lawsuit reads as follows: