[11] Tether Limited is owned by iFinex, a company based in the British Virgin Islands which also operates the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange.

[15] The precursor to Tether, originally named "Realcoin", was announced in July 2014 by co-founders Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins, and Craig Sellars as a Santa Monica–based startup.

[citation needed] The company also announced it was entering private beta, which supported a "Tether+ token" for three currencies: USTether (US+) for United States dollars, EuroTether (EU+) for euros, and YenTether (JP+) for Japanese yen.

Tether Holdings Limited is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands with offices in Switzerland, without giving details, and has never submitted to an independent audit.

[18] For a short period, Tether managed US dollar transactions through Taiwanese banks, which worked with Wells Fargo to enable the transfer of funds outside of Taiwan.

[citation needed] Tether issues tokens on Algorand, Avalanche, Celo, Ethereum, EOS, Liquid Network, Near, Polygon, Solana, Bitcoin Cash's Standard Ledger Protocol, Statemint, Tezos, and Tron.

[citation needed] In August 2024, Tether announced that they would be launching a stablecoin pegged to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) dirham.

[38] In October 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that Tether has been increasingly showing up in investigations tied to money laundering, terror financing, and sanctions evasion.

Research firm Elliptic later disputed the report's accuracy, saying it has engaged with the Wall Street Journal to correct misinterpretations of the level of crypto fundraising by Hamas.

[43] In November 2023, Tether announced that it plans to invest about half a billion dollars over the next six months to become one of the world's top bitcoin miners.

That investment includes part of a $610 million credit facility that Tether had extended to publicly-traded bitcoin mining company Northern Data AG after acquiring shares in the Frankfurt-based firm in September.

[44] In December 2023, Lugano, Switzerland, started to accept cryptocurrencies, including the Tether stablecoin, for paying taxes, fines, and all other invoices.

[45] Tether was the most used stablecoin for criminal activity throughout 2023, according to a report by blockchain analytics company TRM Labs, having been connected to $19.3 billion in illicit transactions.

[46] According to comments made in January 2024 by Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, that company was acting as custodian for Tether's reserves.

[47] During a February 2024 Congressional hearing, Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer, a cryptocurrency supporter, called the Wall Street Journal’s October 2023 article "erroneous", noting federal reports on global financial crimes showed that the actual amount of cryptocurrency used by these groups is "significantly smaller" than what was reported by media outlets.

[50] Tether announced in April 2024 that they invested $200 million from their excess reserves into Blackrock Neutro, a U.S. based brain-chip company that makes brain-to-computer interfaces, including neural implants that can allow people to control computers and prosthetic arms without moving.

[54] In October 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported Tether was the target of a federal criminal investigation for possible violations of sanctions and anti-money-laundering rules.

[59] Tether and its affiliated cryptocurrency exchange, Bitfinex, contested these findings, accusing the authors of cherry-picking data and working with an incomplete dataset.

[64][non-primary source needed] The Kraken cryptocurrency exchange rebuttal of the Bloomberg News findings were later supported by academic research concerning the stability of stablecoins.

Journalist Jon Evans stated that he has yet to find publicly verifiable examples of a purchase of newly issued tether or a redemption in the year ending August 2018.

Tether has stated that as of 19 December 2017, it has re-enabled limited cryptocurrency wallet services and has begun processing the backlog of pending trades.

[72] On November 20, 2023, Tether reported that together with OKX, it had frozen $225 million worth of its cryptocurrency, which had been linked to a human trafficking group in Southeast Asia responsible for a global pig butchering scam.

[73][74] Erin West, deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County, California, told Newsweek that Tether's move represents a decision to declare open season on fraud proceeds.

Ardoino emphasized Tether's decision to disable its tokens in all wallets associated with the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction list.

[76] In the letter, Ardoino reported that Tether had assisted the Department of Justice, U.S. Secret Service, and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in freezing 326 wallets controlling 435 million USDT thus far.

[6][5] On April 25, 2019, New York Attorney General Letitia James (prosecution) filed a lawsuit against iFinex (defendant)—the parent company of Tether Limited and the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange.

[83][84] The prosecution speculated that Crypto Capital Corp had lost or stolen the money, and executives at Bitfinex and Tether Limited had been unable to recover up to US$850 million of funds.

33); and between April and July 2018, a Crypto Capital Corp account in Portugal containing around $150 million of Bitfinex funds had also been frozen (Case Point No.

[87][non-primary source needed] On May 16, 2021, New York Supreme Court Judge Joel M. Cohen granted iFinex's motion to modify the injunction because the New York Attorney General's office's accusations were too general and lacked specificity, stating the prosecution's case was "couched in exceedingly sweeping terms" and "injunctions must be specific.

[91] On October 15, 2021, Tether Limited paid a fine of US$41.6 million for inaccurately claiming that minted USD₮ were 100% backed by fiat USD when they were not—even by Tether Limited's affidavit, they were only backed by a combination of fiat USD and other assets such as "unsecured receivables, commercial papers, funds held by third parties, and other non-fiat assets" (supposedly at 100% in total).