The most outspoken critic of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and the controversial tether token is back on Twitter following an account suspension.
The restoration of the account belonging to Bitfinex’ed came hours after his or her account was suspended on Wednesday by Twitter moderators. Bitfinex’ed has waged a steady campaign against the exchange and the related company Tether, which manages the USDT token, accusing Bitfinex of using the U.S. dollar-pegged “stablecoin” to manipulate and pump up the price of bitcoin. The companies, in turn, have threatened legal action against their pseudonymous gadfly.
In a statement posted to the r/buttcoin subreddit, Bitfinex’ed pointed the blame squarely at the cryptocurrency exchange, writing: “After Failing to spam my Twitter with 400,000 fake followers, Bitfinex hires bots to mass-report my tweets and accounts.”
“My Twitter account is currently suspended, earlier I had about 20 tweets that were considered ‘private’ despite the fact that it’s all public information (and some stuff that even the NY times has along with [B]loomberg, yeah so private), so they’ve been using bots to mass report my tweets,” he or she wrote, adding: “Some people just don’t like their scams being exposed.”
A spokesman for Bitfinex and Tether denied the claims of spamming and automated mass reporting. He would not say whether the companies had reported the account to Twitter at all, even manually.
According to Mashable, a Twitter spokesperson said that the suspension “was a mistake.”
Late last month, Tether said that its relationship with auditor Friedman LLP had “dissolved,” blaming the complexity of the process. The revelation provided further fuel for critics of Bitfinex and Tether, given their promises to release full audits.
Friedman has yet to comment publicly on that outcome, but it has scrubbed all mentions of Bitfinex from its website.
And just days later, Bloomberg reported that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had issued subpoenas to Bitfinex and Tether, although it remains unclear exactly what information the agency is seeking.
With the suspension lifted, Bitfinex’ed has resumed publication, arguing in a Thursday morning tweet that it must have been Friedman that pulled the plug on the Tether audit.
It makes no sense for Tether to fire Friedman and then start all over looking for another auditor and then starting the audit process all over again.
Based on this, it’s my opinion Friedman LLP dropped Bitfinex, and not the other way around.
— Bitfinex’ed
Image via Shutterstock