The LSE Directory / Crypto exchanges
Bitfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange platform launched in December 2012 as a peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange built by Raphael Nicolle, an IT technician from Paris, before expanding into a full service digital asset venue. It is owned and operated by iFinex Inc, registered in the British Virgin Islands. The exchange offers spot trading across more than 180 pairs, margin trading, more than 80 perpetual derivatives contracts (with futures and options also available through a partnership with Thalex), an over the counter desk for large trades, and lending, staking and borrowing products through Bitfinex Borrow. The exchange differentiates itself with a peer-to-peer margin funding market, where users lend capital to leveraged traders to earn a funding rate, a structure it has run since its early years rather than added later as a bolt-on product. It also runs Bitfinex Securities Ltd, a separate arm issuing tokenized securities, operating out of Kazakhstan's Astana International Financial Centre and in El Salvador. This combination points Bitfinex toward institutional and higher net worth traders seeking leveraged, derivatives and structured products alongside spot crypto trading, rather than a simplified retail app experience. It restricts access from a number of jurisdictions, including the United States, Canada and its own home jurisdiction, the British Virgin Islands. iFinex Inc, Bitfinex's parent, also owns Tether, issuer of the USDT stablecoin, so the two companies share common ownership. Bitfinex's leadership includes CEO JL van der Velde, CFO Giancarlo Devasini, COO Claudia Lagorio, and CTO Paolo Ardoino, who also serves as Tether's CEO. It is described as the world's second largest exchange by bitcoin held, with about 1.6 million users across 52 countries. In August 2016 the exchange was hacked for 119,756 bitcoin, worth about $72 million at the time; customer balances were cut by 36 percent and reimbursed through BFX tokens by April 2017. In February 2022 the US Department of Justice seized bitcoin from that theft worth about $3.6 billion, reported as the largest financial seizure in DOJ history at the time; Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, the couple who laundered the funds, pleaded guilty in 2023 and were sentenced in November 2024 to five years and 18 months in prison respectively. Bitfinex has also drawn regulatory penalties, including a $75,000 CFTC fine in 2016, an $18.5 million settlement with the New York Attorney General in 2021 over disclosures tied to Tether's reserves, and a $1.5 million CFTC fine in October 2021 for illegal off-exchange retail commodity transactions with US customers. Bitfinex relocated infrastructure to Zug, Switzerland after Wells Fargo cut off its wire transfers in 2017 and 2018, and has since pushed further into payments and emerging markets: it launched the merchant payment product Bitfinex Pay in 2021 and has been expanding its licensed securities and exchange operations in Latin America, including in El Salvador.
