Bitfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated by iFinex Inc registered in the British Virgin Islands.
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16 Facts About Bitfinex
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2.
Research suggests that price manipulation of bitcoin on Bitfinex accounted for about half of the price increase of bitcoin in late 2017.
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3.
Bitfinex was founded in December 2012 as a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange, offering digital asset trading services to users around the world.
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Bitfinex initially started as a P2P margin lending platform for Bitcoin and later added support for more cryptocurrencies.
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In October 2018, Bitfinex again had serious difficulties with its banking relationships.
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In June 2016, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered Bitfinex to pay a $75,000 fine for offering illegal off-exchanged financed commodity transactions.
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The order found that Bitfinex violated the Commodity Exchange Act by not registering as a Futures Commission Merchant.
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Shortly after the Wells Fargo cutoff, Bitfinex stated all international wires had been cut off by its Taiwanese bank.
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Since then, Bitfinex has moved between a series of banks in other countries, without disclosing to customers where the money is kept.
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In March 2018, British Virgin Islands-based Bitfinex confirmed the exchange's plans to relocate its primary server infrastructure to Zug, Switzerland.
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11.
In May 2018, Bitfinex emailed some of its users asking for some tax details, which the company indicated it would share with the government of the British Virgin Islands, which might in turn pass it on to the governments of the users' countries of residence.
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12.
Bitfinex is believed to have failed to return about $850 million to an unnamed client.
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Bitfinex had been unable to obtain a normal banking relationship, according to the lawsuit, so it deposited over $1 billion with a Panamanian payment processor known as Crypto Capital Corp.
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14.
James alleged that in 2018 Bitfinex knew or suspected that Crypto Capital had absconded with the money, but that their investors were never informed of the loss.
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The hack happened even though Bitfinex was securing the funds with BitGo, which uses multiple-signature security.
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16.
In 2021, Bitfinex repaid their remaining loan balance to Tether in full.
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