In the latest bit of Bitfinex tomfoolery, they have imposed a withdrawal fee of 3% for the withdrawals they are not capable of servicing in a timely fashion, because that is totally something that competently run financial institutions do.
They claim to have wired out a billion dollars in a month (in a crushing *checks notes* 800 transactions, which calls to mind when Mt. Gox claimed they were DOSing their banking partner, the second bank in Japan).
I think the Straussian reading of this is probably 60% “Look we are shadow banking like MOFOs right now trying to stay on top of this. No banking partner in our top countries will touch us, so we’re tapping favor networks, swapping obligations, hawal-ing like crazy.”
40% likely “We want to stop the liquidity flight from Tether because *ahem* we’d find it sort of difficult *ahem* if everyone wanted their money at once.”
Note that it isn’t sufficient for them to stay under the radar of their bank in an country with extremely permissive requirements for banking regulation, they also have to stay under the radar of whomever clears the wires, which (if USD denominated) is a big bank in NYC.
You know, the kind of big banks with a compliance department that would one-click No Thanks We Do Not Accept The Inevitable Fine on their account if they came to the attention of it.
