This is actually nothing new. They actually have mentioned this before in the past, I think it might of been on their blog but they stated many times that the trading for the BTC/USD, ETH/USD, etc pairs are actually done with fiat currency and that they don't allow any trading of tether on their platform, basically no BTC/USDT, ETH/USDT, etc is done on bitfinex.
I think they posted this 6 or 12 months ago when there was another tether FUD week where everybody else was panicking.
But basically you deposit USD from your bank account and get USD in your Bitfinex, if you want to buy some alts on other exchanges like Binance, they will convert the USD to USDT and let you withdraw that.
If you only trade on Bitfinex and never withdraw anything crypto and later on your withdraw your USD, then it will get processed as USD and not tether.
Its all very confusing.
I don't understand why people get confused about this, or why this distinction is worth making. Or why everyone thinks the banking rumors are "Tether FUD" but not "Bitfinex FUD."
Bitfinex literally can't deliver on any of its USD obligations yet people only ever mention Tether. It's bizarre. For some reason, people see USDT and they think "money printing" but then they see USD trading on Bitfinex and think "totally legit!"
I guess that's what Bitfinex is trying to play on here. People don't understand how Tether works.
There is no difference between "fiat on Bitfinex" and USDT. If you hold USDT, you are holding USD liabilities of Tether. Tether = Bitfinex. Same parent company, same banking problems, same bank account signers, and literally the only exchange where USDT can be exchanged for "fiat money." The reason Bitfinex can exchange USDT for USD at 1:1 is because they control Tether's bank accounts and issue USDT.