[thisisit]

I had to re-read your post again to understand what you are getting at. It is not about what BTC shorts agreed upon rather what does Bitfinex agreement say about people shorting BTC on their platform. As jackgavigan pointed out - 2010 Global Master Securities Lending Agreement is clear on what the obligations should ideally be.

So did Bitfinex create an agreement along those lines for their short sellers? This requires looking into their T&C. A wild guess is they did not and never included a condition about such situations. That means asking BTC shorts to cover BTC cash had no legal legs at all. The best they could do is to pay the long BTC holders and exempt shorts.

You can bet they must have learned their lesson after this fiasco and updated their terms accordingly.