The dust has barely settled on Ripple’s lenient verdict in the four-year legal battle with the SEC when the crypto sector is threatened with the next legal farce. The insolvent lending platform Celsius has filed a lawsuit against Tether, accusing the stablecoin issuer of embezzling assets on a large scale.
The amount in dispute, according to a Court document: A total of 57,428.64 BTC, currently worth almost $3.4 billion. Celsius recently made headlines when the company sued former customers who had withdrawn funds in a 90-day period before the bankruptcy. Now Tether is in the crosshairs of the plaintiffs.

The reason for the excitement: During Celsius’ insolvency proceedings, Tether is said to have borrowed a large sum in USDT, for which Celsius in turn handed over 39,542.42 BTC as collateral. However, due to the significant drop in the BTC price, the lending platform had to provide further collateral in June 2022.
Tether is now accused of having completely liquidated the Bitcoin in question without even giving the company an opportunity to provide additional collateral. At the time, the BTC price was approaching the 20,000 US dollar mark, below which it temporarily fell in July of the same year. Accordingly, today’s fiat value is about three times higher than at the time of the incident.
Tether speaks of “blackmail” and defends itself against the allegations
Tether is not prepared to accept such accusations. In a new Blog post the company writes that Celsius’ lawsuit is completely “unfounded” and that it will “vigorously defend itself” against it. “The BTC were liquidated at the June 2022 prices on the instructions and with the consent of Celsius,” the stablecoin issuer explains, speaking of around 815 million USDT borrowed.
The amount in dispute is not entirely clear, as Tether itself only alludes to the 39,542 Bitcoin sold in the post. However, according to page 28 of the complaint, Celsius apparently also wants to have two other transfers from the same period declared invalid, which would result in a total amount of 57,428.64 BTC.
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Tether recently reported record revenues in the second quarter of the current year: the company behind the popular USDT stablecoin earned 1.3 billion US dollars. Overall, this means over 5.2 billion US dollars in profit for the first half of 2024, which underlines Tether’s strength.
No wonder they are calm about the lawsuit: “Tether is a highly profitable company that continues to generate profits every month. Therefore, even in the unlikely scenario that this baseless lawsuit achieves anything, Tether token holders will not be affected.”
Celsius’ collapse was one of the most dramatic crypto events in the mixed year of 2022. The lending platform filed for bankruptcy in the summer, with liabilities of $5.5 billion clearly exceeding assets by over $1.2 billion. Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky is currently free on $40 million bail. His trial is scheduled for September.
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