Chinese Bitcoin billionaire Zhao Dong, one of crypto exchange Bitfinex’s major shareholders, has recently revealed Bitfinex’s plan to launch a $1 billion initial exchange offering (IEO) later on this month.

According to a report by Coindesk, investors are to sign a soft commitment to the IOE by May 5 before they can invest in the tokens at a minimum buy-in of $1 million. Zhao Dong, founder of Chinese Bitcoin (BTC) over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk, allegedly said that $500 million out of 1 billion tokens offered, with each priced at $1, have already been claimed.

Once the system has allocated all of its tokens, the IEO won’t need to take place on the retail channel, the shareholder further commented, “it will [then] be like a private placement.”

In another remark on the new token, Zhao described it as a “hybrid” of Binance’s native token BNB and Bitfinex’s current token BFX, which was issued to make up for users’ loss of approximately 120,000 BTC in a major hack in 2016.

The news broke on the heels of USD-pegged stablecoin company Tether’s counter-argument to New York Attorney General Letitia James’ court filing, which allegedly accuses the firm of drawing $850 million out of its private reserve to serve as a slush fund for Bitfinex’s loss at Crypto Capital, as reported by The Crypto Sight.