The Tether Class Certification Is A Warning Label For Crypto Defendants In Antitrust Cases

A federal judge in New York recently certified two classes of cryptocurrency buyers against Tether and Bitfinex. If you issue a stablecoin, run an exchange, or make markets in digital assets, that sentence should get your attention. The case, In re Tether and Bitfinex Crypto Asset Litigation, has been running since 2019, and the plaintiffs say the defendants inflated crypto prices by hundreds of billions of dollars. In February 2026, the court said those buyers can sue as a class. In July, the Second Circuit upheld that ruling.

Class certification is the moment a manageable lawsuit becomes an existential one. Before certification, a defendant faces a handful of named plaintiffs and their individual losses. After it, the defendant faces the aggregated claims of everyone who bought in the market during the class period. The dollars change by orders of magnitude, and so does the pressure to settle. That asymmetry is the whole game in class litigation, and it is why the certification