US authorities recently ordered the precautionary seizure of $84.2 million held by Capstone Limited across several leading financial institutions, including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase. Initiated under civil forfeiture proceedings, this action targets funds and digital assets suspected of illegally passing through the US banking system. While the operation does not directly target Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, or the Bitfinex platform, it sheds light on the complex financial "plumbing" that enables certain crypto industry players to interact with traditional banks.
At the heart of the case, federal prosecutors accuse Capstone of acting as an undisclosed intermediary on behalf of EQIBank, a digital institution based in Dominica. The intermediary is alleged to have facilitated massive transfers for Tether and Bitfinex while concealing the true nature of its operations from its US partner banks, thereby operating without the necessary regulatory approvals. For EQIBank, the blow is severe: the bank estimates the seizure at $89 million—a major portion of its liquid reserves—severely undermining its short-term economic viability.
For its part, Tether quickly sought to reassure the market by downplaying its exposure to EQIBank. According to statements from the issuer, the funds held with the bank represent less than 0.034% of its total assets—a ratio that the company claims in no way threatens the solidity of its backing reserves. This defensive posture underscores the leading stablecoin issuer's desire to distance itself from the legal troubles of its third-party service providers, even as the organization has faced heightened regulatory scrutiny for several years.
This case revives painful memories for the sector, notably the 2018 crisis involving payment processor Crypto Capital, which forced Bitfinex to draw from Tether's reserves to cover massive losses. While no criminal charges directly target the main crypto players involved at this stage, the incident highlights the fragility of banking corridors used by offshore platforms. Above all, the Capstone case illustrates the determination of US authorities to clean up financial channels, increasingly targeting intermediary links to block access to the domestic banking system.