A History of Tether and Bitfinex’s Audits, Attestations, Memos, and Letters: Both Promised and Actual

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https://bennettftomlin.com/2021/07/17/a-history-of-tether-and-bitfinexs-audits-attestations-memos-and-letters-both-promised-and-actual/

Amidst all the confusion surrounding Tether and Bitfinex it can be difficult to keep track of what they have actually provided in terms of audits, attestations, and other documents to support their contentions. Here I will summarize, but the important note that needs to be included at the top is that both Bitfinex and Tether once hired an auditor, but neither ever completed the audit.

Ever since Tether was founded they have promised to provide a full financial audit. It feature prominently in their whitepaper and on their website for years. They have never provided this audit, but have provided a variety of other documents meant to convince the public that they had sufficient backing for the tethers in circulation.
In March of 2015 Tether and Factom announced (archive) they had formed a partnership to provide greater transparency into Tether’s holdings. The partnership never provided any additional transparency into Tether or its operations.

In August of 2016 Bitfinex promised (archive) to provide a full financial and security audit after they were hacked. They initially announced that Ledger Labs was hired to perform both. No audit from Ledger Labs was ever released. This was likely in part due to the fact that Ledger Labs was not able to provide financial audits.

In May of 2017 Bitfinex announced (archive) they had engaged Friedman LLP out of New York to audit them. As of today in 2021 we have yet to get an update from Bitfinex on the status of this audit.

In September of 2017 Tether announced (archive) that they had engaged Friedman LLP out of New York to audit them. This audit would never occur, we would eventually get an update from a Tether spokesperson saying the relationship dissolved, citing the “excruciatingly detailed procedures”(archive) that the auditor wanted to undertake.

Also in September of 2017 Tether released from previous attestations from a small accounting firm in Taiwan called TOPSUN. These were monthly attestations attesting to Tether having sufficient backing for the end of the month from December 2016 through March 2017. Strangely these were not completed at the end of the respective months but were all completed on May 23rd 2017. (Strangely approximately two weeks after they announced that Friedman had been brought on to audit Bitfinex)
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