Tether (USDT) has been heavily criticized in the past for their lack of transparency and varying premiums compared to USD on the companies home exchange, Bitfinex. Now Tether & Bitfinex have introduced several changes in the hopes of gaining back trust of the industry amidst of the dropping Crpytocurrency market.

Tether’s crisis

Banks supporting Bitfinex and Tether have been in a hard spot historically. The last partner of the crypto ventures, Puerto Rico’s Noble Bank, lost its above mentioned clients in the middle of financial troubles as the Bank was actively looking for a buyer back in October.

The last major bank that supported Bitfinex and Tether with stable financial services was Wells Fargo, but the U.S.-based financial institution also dropped the 2 clients back in 2017.

These events didn’t help Tether to maintain the dollar peg of its USDT, the stablecoin lost 5-10% of its value several times during its history.

Rise of stablecoins

The recent surge in stablecoins didn’t help Tether’s case either. Several large companies, which are known in the crypto space, have launched their own ‘regulated’ versions of USDT claiming better security and accountability.

We have previously given a review of the competition in an article, the most noteworthy are: Paxos, backed by a trust company that is regulated in the state of NY; TrueUSD, part of the TrustToken product line and backed by funds such as a16zcrypto and BlockTower; USDCoin, a product of the Goldman Sachs’ backed Circle; GUSD, a stablecoin backed by Gemini and the Winklewoss twins.

Tether’s move

The first announcement came during early November when Tether disclosed their new finance partner, namely Deltec Bank & Trust limited. The paper disclosed verified the holdings of Tether, even though no audit was made through an accounting firm.

Today another set of announcements came from the two companies Bitfinex & Tether, which are co-owned by the same CEO. The first one included the news of a redesigned platform from Tether’s side that will allow easier verification of new customers and redemption of USD for USDT. It seems now that Tether finally sorted out their relationship with the new banking partner that was announced earlier.

New account requirement and fee structures that were taken from Tether.to can be seen below:

Transaction Value Range Fee per fiat Withdrawal* Fee per fiat Deposit Fee per Tether Deposit or Withdrawal 100,000 USD to 999,999 USD The greater of $1,000 or 0.4% 0.1% FREE 1,000,000 USD to 10,000,000 USD 1% 0.1% FREE 10,000,000 USD and over 3% 0.1% FREE

According to the official page, USDT owners can instantly convert now to Fiat through the platform and start their withdrawals effective immediately.

The second announcement came from Bitfinex itself, this included the addition of new Fiat-to-Stablecoin market pairings to keep Bitfinex as a neutral platform stablecoin-wise. The new pairs are: USDT/USD and EURT/EUR.

This means that users of the exchange will be able to keep or withdraw their balances in fiat if they wish, but can also convert them to the stablecoins listed in order to transfer them to other platforms. This makes converting USDT to real USD possible even without Tether’s website.

The post also included a stance on the possibility of adding new stablecoins if the exchange sees rising demand for them.