07-12-2025 
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Tether has lost its bid to dismiss a claim by administrators of the bankrupt Celsius Network looking to claw back billions of dollars’ worth of ‘improperly’ liquidated BTC tokens.
- Tether loses bid to duck Celsius suit
- Bitfinex launching USDT-powered ‘stablechain’
- Tether big in Bolivia
- Paolo can’t secure Juventus board seat
June 30 brought a ruling by Judge Martin Glenn in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in the case pitting Celsius Debtors against Tether, issuer of the market-leading USDT stablecoin. (Comically, the filing declares it to be the “PUNITED STATES” court, which we’ll assume is a typo, but hey, grounds for appeal?)
First, some background. The suit was filed last August based on the Debtors’ belief that Tether had crossed legal lines by selling nearly 40,000 BTC tokens—currently worth ~$4 billion—that Celsius had put up as collateral for USDT-based loans. Celsius went bankrupt in July 2022 in a haze of criminal fraud allegations, for which founder Alex Mashinsky was sentenced to 12 years in prison earlier this year.
Celsius was effectively a Ponzi scheme from its inception, forcing Mashinsky to be constantly borrowing from one source to pay others. The latter category included Celsius customers, who purchased and staked the platform’s native CEL token based on Mashinsky’s promises of massive returns for doing so.
Tether’s ties to Celsius went beyond merely providing loans that the company couldn’t get from a bank. As Mashinsky’s own emails indicate, Tether was using Celsius to service “all their US clients,” including market-makers Cumberland, Jump, and others.
But as 2022’s wave of crypto frauds, bankruptcies, and implosions began, BTC’s price began to fall. This prompted Tether to issue margin calls requiring additional collateral to support the $512 million in USDT that Celsius had borrowed.
Over a six-week period ending on June 12, 2022, Celsius sent nearly 17,000 additional BTC to Tether. These BTC transfers occurred during the 90-day period preceding Celsius’ filing for bankruptcy, which under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, are eligible to be ‘clawed back’ by bankruptcy administrators.
Celsius also borrowed another $300 million worth of USDT during this period, for which it transferred another 10,700 BTC to Tether. Over 2,200 of this BTC was excess collateral.
As Celsius began to circle the drain, Tether declined to provide further USDT loans to Celsius and liquidated the BTC put up as collateral. This liquidation didn’t honor the 10-hour waiting period following a margin call that was stipulated under the terms of the loans.
An amended agreement that the parties signed in January 2022 stipulated that if Tether liquidated the Celsius BTC, any surplus proceeds were to be paid to Celsius. Instead, Tether sold the BTC at what Celsius claims were below-market prices and kept the proceeds for itself, an action that Celsius alleges cost the company $100 million.
Last November, Tether filed to dismiss the Celsius claim, citing the plaintiffs’ lack of standing, a lack of personal jurisdiction, and the plaintiffs’ failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.
Last week, Judge Glenn rejected most of Tether’s arguments but dismissed Count IV of the complaint, which alleged that Tether had breached a covenant of good faith and fair dealing under the laws of the British Virgin Islands (Tether’s home base at the time) by liquidating the BTC. However, Glenn gave Celsius leave to amend their complaint.
As of last August, bankruptcy administrators had distributed $2.5 billion to 251,000 Celsius creditors, representing roughly two-thirds of the total number of former customers. Many of the remaining 121,000 creditors had yet to claim their owed funds, some because the amounts were trivial, others for reasons unknown (including the possibility that coming forward would require identifying themselves).
Tether is by no means the only entity in the sights of the Celsius administrators. In March, Celsius sued Chainalysis, accusing the blockchain analytics firm of performing a knowingly fraudulent audit of Celsius’ assets under management in 2020 and of misleading Celsius customers and investors.
Stablecoin-based stablechain is called Stable
In other Tether news, the Bitfinex digital asset exchange (which shares ownership with Tether) just announced details of its previously hinted plans to launch Stable, “a dedicated Layer 1 stablechain optimized for payments using USDT.”
This ‘stablechain’ aims to reduce transaction fees and speed up settlement times, while making the whole process accessible to everyday users, serving as “rails for the real world.”
The official Stable site claims USDT is “the world’s most used asset” (the citation behind this claim appears to be missing), and Bitfinex believes such a popular means of transferring funds “deserves its own chain.”
Left unsaid is the likely view that the owners of Bitfinex and Tether deserve their own transaction fees, rather than letting third-party USDT-friendly networks like TRON (where $80.7 billion of USDT currently resides) and Ethereum ($73.8 billion) take their cut.
Stable appears to be part of a trend in which crypto companies launch their networks on which the native token is one under their control. Take Base, the Ethereum layer 2 network launched by Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) exchange, which relies on the USDC stablecoin issued by Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL), in which Coinbase holds an equity stake. The aim appears to be ensuring a stake in all on-chain activities, at least, the revenue-generating kind.
According to Bitfinex, Stable will use USDT as its ‘gas’ token for transaction fees, “eliminating the complexity of holding additional, volatile tokens.” Fees will be “well below a fraction of a cent,” while peer-to-peer USDT transfers will be gas-free. The network will come with its own Stable Wallet, which will feature “social login, debit/credit card integration, and human-readable wallet aliases.”Bitfinex claims its new network will be capable of handling “thousands of transactions per second” while offering institutions “guaranteed blockspace allocation, scalable batch processing, and robust security measures.” Cross-chain bridging will be possible using USDT0 and LayerZero tech, while decentralized app (dApp) developers have been told to go nuts on stablecoin use cases.
Stable’s roadmap is currently in ‘Phase 1,’ which includes launching the StableWallet and implementing StableBFT, aka “a customized PoS [proof of stake] consensus protocol built on CometBFT.” (BFT, if you were wondering, stands for Byzantine fault tolerance.)
Phase 2 involves enhancing transaction throughput via optimistic parallel execution, launching USDT transfer aggregators, and offering dedicated blockspace to enterprises. The final phase involves those aforementioned dApp tools and a consensus mechanism based on directed acyclic graphs.
Last month, longtime crypto entrepreneur Gabriel Abed, who was named chairman of the Binance exchange’s first board of directors last year, was identified as a strategic investor in Stable.
Tether: big in Bolivia
While stablecoins appear to be on the cusp of mainstream acceptance as a payment mechanism in North America and Europe, those are markets in which Tether appears unable to participate due to its inability to abide by regulatory constraints.
In the European Union, Tether has effectively opted out of the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) stablecoin framework due to the requirement for larger issuers to hold the bulk of their fiat reserves in cash in local banks. In America, two different stablecoin bills will allow Tether a lengthy grace period but will also impose requirements that Tether has been unwilling to undertake on its own, including submitting its reserves to a comprehensive third-party audit.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, who praised Stable’s upcoming launch last month and was credited in turn for “advising” the Stable team, has begun publicly declaring the company’s “core mission” to be focused on supporting “emerging markets where access to stable financial infrastructure is urgently needed.”
Last month, Ardoino tweeted that “[i]n Bolivia, real prices in shops are displayed in USD₮.” The tweet included photos of products for sale in an airport duty free store.
Another photo showed explanatory signage reading: “Our products are priced in USDT (Tether), a stable cryptocurrency with a reference price reported daily by the Central Bank of Bolivia, based on the Binance cryptocurrency trading platform. You can pay in Bolivian Bolivianos (BOB) or US Dollars (USD). The conversion will be made based on the daily USDT rate.”
Recently, Reuters reported that Bolivians were increasingly turning to tokens such as USDT to hedge against the depreciation of the local currency. Last November, Bolivia’s Banco Bisa began offering USDT custody to its banking customers.
However, a former Bolivia central bank executive told Reuters that daily USDT volumes in the country are only around US$600,000. That’s a pittance compared to tradfi volume of $18-$22 million, while cash-based black market sales are around $12-$14 million.
Bolivia’s central bank reported last week that transactions using Electronic Payment Channels and Instruments for Virtual Assets totaled $294 million in the first half of 2025, a 530% rise over the same period last year.
The bank said these digital tools “have facilitated access to foreign currency transactions, including remittances, small purchases and payments, benefiting micro and small business owners across various sectors, as well as families nationwide.”
Ardoino finds beautiful game not so beautiful up close
Tether is the unquestioned stablecoin market leader, with USDT’s market cap crossing $158.3 billion on July 2, a new record high. But that doesn’t seem to impress the owners of Juventus FC, a fixture in Italy’s Serie A football league.
In February, Tether announced that it had taken an 8.2% stake in Juventus, marking the first investment by a digital asset firm in a major European football club. The following month, Tether announced that its Juventus stake had increased to 10.12%, representing 6.18% of the club’s voting rights. By April, the stake had risen to 10.7%, representing a total outlay of roughly €128 million.
But on June 2, Ardoino tweeted that the club—which is majority owned by the Agnelli family’s investment firm Exor NV—hadn’t allowed Tether to participate in a planned capital increase that commenced in April. Ardoino later complained in an interview that Tether had only had “very, very limited” communications with the club and Exor.
On June 25, Bloomberg reported that Tether still hadn’t met with Juventus but was pushing the club to allow Tether a seat on its board of directors. Juventus has reportedly said it plans to meet with Tether executives when its current season concludes, after which Exor will ‘evaluate its position’ regarding Tether.
It’s almost as if the Agnelli family had some reason to think partnering with Tether might not be the best thing for the club’s image.
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