Tether international wires blocked by its Taiwan banks

The team at Tether.to, the backer’s of cryptocurrency versions of fiat currency in USD, EUR and JPY issued an update concerning the block of international bank wires to and from the company.

The firm said it is currently expecting continued delays in processing international wires to and from tether.to users.

Blockchain-based withdrawals and deposits are in no way affected and the company stated that the Tether reserve remains in a surplus of the 1:1 backing of USDT and has more than the necessary currency on deposit to redeem all existing tethers.

Since April 18, 2017, all incoming international wires to Tether have been blocked and refused by its Taiwanese banks. As such, the company does not expect the supply of tethers to increase substantially until these constraints have been lifted.

For customers with bank accounts in Taiwan, Tether is currently experiencing no difficulties or delays in funds transfers in USD, with deposits and withdrawals functioning as expected.

For customers with bank accounts outside of Taiwan, Tether is pursuing alternate funding channels.

It was reported that new banking channels are in the process of being established, and the company is speaking with integrators of USDT about the possibility of intermediate customer redemption processes.

Until then, the company is telling users not to send any additional incoming wires until it can provide a reliable method of receiving funds. Any incoming wires will be returned to their original sending account, which may result in fees levied by the sender’s bank.

The Taiwan banking issues are similar to those of popular crypto exchange Bitfinex, who has been having the same sort of issues since last month.

The Tether team said:

“As additional progress is made, we will keep our customers and the community up to date with developments.”

“We are immensely grateful to the community for standing with us against unreasonable attempts to disrupt and discredit the legal and responsible business of reputable, innovative companies like us and other exchanges in the blockchain space.”

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you.”