Tether Receives 500 BTC Ransom, Under Threat Of Leaking Harmful Data

Tether receives ransom for 500 BTC which is now worth less than $24 million and the sender threatened to leak harmful documents while the company believes that the entire thing is only a sad extortion attempt so let’s read more in today’s Tether news.

Tether is still the company that issues the most widely-used stablecoin USDT and today it revealed that it got a ransom demand. Tether receives ransom for 500 BTC and the sender threatened the company to leak harmful documents to the public that will harm the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. The issuer of the USDT stablecoin took it to Twitter to reveal that someone threatened to leak the documents in public and they explained that “forged documents are circulating online purporting to be between Tether personnel and representatives of Deltec Bank and Trust and others but the documents are bogus.”

Tether explained that they received a ransom demanding 500 BTC which is now worth around $23.6 million. The company said that unless the ransom is paid, the sender will “leak documents to the public in an effort to harm the BTC ecosystem.” Tether said they have no intention of paying the money. At the time of writing, there’s no further information on what will happen next and it is unclear whether this is only a basic extortion scheme like the ones directed at other crypto companies or are people only looking to undermine Tether and the entire community as a whole. Either way, the ones seeking to harm the company are getting desperate.

The company said that the “Forged communications and associated ransom demand” were reported to law enforcement. What’s interesting is that all of this came a week after Bitfinex and Tether reached a settlement with the New York Attorney General’s office and put an end to the lawsuit that has been going on for months and posed a threat of really harming the ecosystem. The company admitted to no wrongdoings and agreed to pay an $18.5 million fine. As a part of the settlement deal, the company agreed to not be able to deal with customers in New York.

As reported previously, Much of the New York Attorney General investigation into Tether centered around whether each USDT is really backed 1-to-1 by fiat as the company claimed. Both Bitfinex and Tether have to pay $18.5 million in fines and for the next two years, they will be required to submit reports about how much money they have in their reserves and to how to exclude New York citizens from their services.