Blockchain

Tether (USDT) January 15th Deadline on iFinex Case: Everything You Need to Know

Published

4 months ago

January 15, 2021

Many in the cryptocurrency field have recently discussed the upcoming January 15th date as an important consideration for the ongoing case between the office of the New York Attorney General (NYAG) and iFinex, the parent company of Bitfinex and Tether.

With this in mind, below is a comprehensive summary of what happened and what to expect on this date.

The NYAG v. iFinex Case: What Happened?

Back in April 2019, the office of the New York Attorney General alleged that the popular cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex lost $850 million and then used funds from its affiliated stablecoin operator Tether (the company that issues USDT) to cover the shortfall.

As CryptoPotato reported, later on, Tether issued a statement through a blog post which said that the allegations were written in “bad faith” and were also “riddled with false assertions.”

In May 2019, Judge Joel Cohen granted a partial stay on the NYAG office’s request for documents from the two companies until their hearing takes place on July 29th. During that hearing, the judge on the case, Joel Cohen, decided to extend the preliminary injunction as he was not ready to make a final decision on whether the case should go forward or be dismissed. Hence, he extended that injunction by 90 days.

In August, however, the NYAG presented new evidence on the case, alleging that apart from covering up the $850 million, Bitfinex and Tether had served New York customers for longer than they claimed. In part, the document stated:

The OAG has uncovered substantial ties between Respondents and New York concerning Respondents’ corporate operations; trading on the Bitfinex platform; the issuance, redemption, and trading of tethers; use of financial institutions to move money and process customer deposits and withdrawals; and representations to the market that might have been misleading.

Essentially, the NYAG also attacked Bitfinex’s LEO initial exchange offering, claiming that it “has every indicia of a securities issuance subject to the Martin Act, and there is reason to believe that the issuance is related to the matters under investigation,” meaning the alleged cover-up.

Additionally, the NYAG called iFinex’s motion to dismiss “an improper attempt to impede a lawful investigation.”

The Order to Turn in Documents

In September 2020, Judge Cohen ruled that Bitfinex and Tether must turn over documents detailing their financial relationship and history to the NYAG’s office. In addition to that, he also extended an injunction that barred Tether from loaning funds to Bitfinex by 90 more days.

However, on December 9th, 2020, Letitia James, the Attorney General, filed a document, asking Justice Cohen to extend the deadline to January 15th, 2021. James said that “the parties continue to cooperate on the production of documents in response to the 354 Order, and anticipate that the production could be finalized in the coming weeks.”

Why the January 15th Deadline is Important?

With this, we arrive at the time of this writing and the importance of the January 15th deadline. There are a few reasons for which this is a critical point in this case. First, it requires that iFinex produces the necessary information for the NYAG to continue its investigation and to further substantiate the merits of its claims.

And perhaps what’s even more important, however, is the nature of the documentation. In essence, iFinex has to produce materials on the process by which they determine whether, when, and how to issue and redeem tethers, banks, documents, and communications regarding specific issuances and redemptions, as well as trading activity on the Bitfinex trading platform regarding tethers and bitcoin.

This is a landmark case for the entire cryptocurrency space as USDT is the most popular and biggest stablecoin on the market. The company issuing it has been involved in many scandals in the past, with many questioning the fact that it’s actually backed by USD.

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Source: https://cryptopotato.com/tether-usdt-january-15th-deadline-on-ifinex-case-everything-you-need-to-know/

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Blockchain

Bitcoin Proponents Against Elon Musk Following Heated Dogecoin vs Bitcoin Tweets

Published

30 mins ago

May 16, 2021

Republished by Plato

Last week, Elon Musk and Tesla shocked the entire crypto industry following an announcement that the electric car company will no longer accept bitcoin payments for “environmental reasons.”

A Hard Pill For Bitcoin Maximalists

Giving its reasons, Tesla argued that Bitcoin mining operation requires massive energy consumption, which is generated from fossil fuel, especially coal, and as such, causes environmental pollution.

The announcement caused a market dip which saw over $4 billion of both short and long positions liquidated as the entire capitalization lost almost $400 billion in a day.

For Bitcoin maximalists and proponents, Tesla’s decision was a hard pill to swallow, and that was evident in their responses to the electric car company and its CEO.

While the likes of Max Keiser lambasted Musk for his company’s move, noting that it was due to political pressure, others like popular YouTuber Chris Dunn were seen canceling their Tesla Cybertruck orders.

Adding more fuel to the fire, Musk also responded to a long Twitter thread by Peter McCormack, implying that Bitcoin is not actually decentralized.

Bitcoin is actually highly centralized, with supermajority controlled by handful of big mining (aka hashing) companies.

A single coal mine in Xinjiang flooded, almost killing miners, and Bitcoin hash rate dropped 35%. Sound “decentralized” to you?https://t.co/Oom8yzGRNQ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021

Musk Working With Dogecoin Devs

Elon Musk, who named himself the “Dogefather” on SNL, created a Twitter poll, asking his nearly 55 million followers if they want Tesla to integrate DOGE as a payment option.

The poll, which had almost 4 million votes, was favorable for Dogecoin, as more than 75% of the community voted “Yes.”

Following Tesla’s announcement, the billionaire tweeted that he is working closely with Dogecoin developers to improve transaction efficiency, saying that it is “potentially promising.”

Tesla dropping bitcoin as a payment instrument over energy concerns, with the possibility of integrating dogecoin payments, comes as a surprise to bitcoiners since the two cryptocurrencies use a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm and, as such, face the same underlying energy problem.

Elon Musk: Dogecoin Wins Bitcoin

Despite using a PoW algorithm, Elon Musk continues to favor Dogecoin over Bitcoin. Responding to a tweet that covered some of the reasons why Musk easily chose DOGE over BTC, the billionaire CEO agreed that Dogecoin wins Bitcoin in many ways.

Comparing DOGE to BTC, Musk noted that “DOGE speeds up block time 10X, increases block size 10X & drops fee 100X. Then it wins hands down.”

Ideally, Doge speeds up block time 10X, increases block size 10X & drops fee 100X. Then it wins hands down.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021

Max Keiser: Who’s The Bigger Idiot?

As Elon Musk continues his lovey-dovey affair with Dogecoin, Bitcoin proponents continue to criticize the Dogefather.

Following Musk’s comments on Dogecoin today, popular Bitcoin advocate Max Keiser took to his Twitter page to ridicule the Tesla boss while recalling when gold bug Peter Schiff described Bitcoin as “intrinsically worthless” after he lost access to his BTC wallet.

“Who’s the bigger idiot?” Keiser asked.

Who’s the bigger idiot? pic.twitter.com/YopCoat33W

— 🍊💊 Max Keiser (@maxkeiser) May 16, 2021

Aside from Keiser, other Bitcoin proponents such as Michael Saylor replied to Tesla’s CEO:

The world needs a decentralized, secure, deflationary store of value like #Bitcoin much more than it needs the more centralized, less secure, inflationary medium of exchange that you describe above.

— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) May 16, 2021

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Source: https://cryptopotato.com/bitcoin-proponents-against-elon-musk-following-heated-dogecoin-vs-bitcoin-tweets/

Blockchain

Tesla CEO Elon Musk Explains Why ‘Bitcoin Is Actually Highly Centralized’

On Sunday (May 16), Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk attacked Bitcoin (BTC) for being highly centralized after podcaster Peter McCormack criticized Musk for supporting Dogecoin (DOGE) and for spreading misinformation about Bitcoin. As you probably already know, on May 12, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shocked the world by complaining about Bitcoin mining’s […]

Published

32 mins ago

May 16, 2021

Republished by Plato

As you probably already know, on May 12, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shocked the world by complaining about Bitcoin mining’s high usage of fossil fuels and saying that for this reason Tesla would not be accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment until “mining transitions to more sustainable energy.”

The next day, Musk revealed that has been working with Dogecoin developers to reduce the power consumption of mining of the meme-based cryptocurrency.

Working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency. Potentially promising.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2021

In fact, as Decrypt reported on May 14, according to Ross Nicoll, one of the part-time Dogecoin developers Decrypt talked to, Musk “started talking to the developers in 2019, he has ‘encouraged them to improve the higher transaction throughput,’ provided ‘lots of advice and input,’ and shared his vast Rolodex of contacts.”

Nicoll also said (1) that the dev team he is part of is hoping to reuce Dogecoin’s power consumption; (2) Musk has been with Dogecoin’s dev team since April 2019 (when he said that Dogecoinmight be his favortie cryptocurrency); and (3) that Musk had offered to fund the team, but his offer of financial support had been rejected (just as with offers they had received from other wealthy potential backers).

Yesterday, Dogecoin supporter “@itsALLrisky” said on Twitter explained why he thinks that Dogecoin, which Musk has referred to as “people’s crypto”, is better than Bitcoin. Musk said Dogecoin would beat Bitcoin “hands down” if its developers made three improvements: 10X faster block production time, 10X larger block size, and 100X lower transaction fees.

Ideally, Doge speeds up block time 10X, increases block size 10X & drops fee 100X. Then it wins hands down.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021

Well, today, McCormack criticized Musk for supporting meme-based Dogecoin, which he thinks could potentially result in ill-informed investors in $DOGE suffering big losses, as well as causing harm to Bitcoin’s reputation and its ecosystem.

2/ Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant right now, the implications are in play, and there are two specific ones I want to discuss:
a) Doge investors will get rekt
b) You are increasing the workload of Bitcoiners

I am not the smartest bitcoiner but I will do my best.

— Peter McCormack🇸🇻 (@PeterMcCormack) May 16, 2021

McCormack’s accusations angered Musk, who seemingly warned that he might just “go all in on Doge.”

Musk then went on to explain why he believes that Bitcoin is highly centralized.

Hey cryptocurrency “experts”, ever heard of PayPal? It’s possible … maybe … that I know than you realize about how money works.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021

DISCLAIMER

The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

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Source: https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2021/05/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-explains-why-bitcoin-is-actually-highly-centralized/

Blockchain

ETH Developers Calculated How To Defuse The Difficulty Bomb

Published

1 hour ago

May 16, 2021

Republished by Plato

ETH developers calculated how to defuse the difficulty bomb because if they leave it untreated, they will slow down the network as we can see more in our Ethereum news today.

Ethereum’s encoded difficulty bomb is set to explode this summer and James Hancock as well as Tim beiko said that the ETH developers calculated the time needed to delay the bomb and this could the last time the developers need to take that action. Ethereum developers agreed on Friday how to delay the difficulty bomb ad if that is left untreated, the entire network could be slowed down. The difficulty bomb is an old piece of code that makes mining on ETH slower and less profitable over time by increasing the lag between the production of blocks.

We just wrapped up #AllCoreDevs 113 😁

Agenda: https://t.co/54AacjzpFO
Recording: https://t.co/PM8CVZ7daL

Recap below 👇🏻 https://t.co/wDU2vlNnBS

— Tim Beiko | timbeiko.eth 🦇🔊 (@TimBeiko) May 14, 2021

Ethereum 2.0 switches the network from proof of work as a way of validating transactions with powerful mining computers to Proo of Stake which rewards the ones that pledge the coins to the network. It takes an average of 13 seconds to mine a block on ETH right now and without delaying the bomb, it could take more than 20 seconds to validate the block by the end of the year. Ethereum developers agreed on how many blocks were quite necessary to delay the bomb until December. The calculation for the delay was proposed by the ETH core developers James Hancock as he said:

“The bomb’s always there, and we defuse it by turning the blocktime back just for the bomb.”

The block time chart on Etherscan. Annotated by James Hancock for Decrypt.

He later said that the proposal will delay the bomb by 9,700,000 blocks. Tim Beiko, the ETH core developer also said that the developers dismissed a proposal to delay the bomb next spring but that won’t be necessary. The developers expected that by December, the network will update to allow the ETH 1.0 the network that relies on PoW to communicate with ETH 2.0 as the new network relies on PoS and this is known as the Merge:

“If the Merge is ready by December, we won’t need to do anything about the bomb because we will move away from mining entirely.”

If the merge plans remain unimplemented, the Shanghai fork is expected to go live and will delay the bomb once again. The Bomb has been delayed three times so far.

DC Forecasts is a leader in many crypto news categories, striving for the highest journalistic standards and abiding by a strict set of editorial policies. If you are interested to offer your expertise or contribute to our news website, feel free to contact us at [email protected]

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Source: https://www.dcforecasts.com/ethereum-news/eth-developers-calculated-how-to-defuse-the-difficulty-bomb/