American securities regulatory body charges Bittrex crypto exchange

Bittrex crypto exchange became the latest crypto company to face enforcement action under the jurisdiction of the United States.

Bittrex is now an averagely popular crypto exchange. Before 2020, Bitrrex was the top crypto platform to trade crypto assets but high-quality crypto services by Binance-like crypto companies resulted in the downfall of the popularity of this platform significantly. The services of this exchange are available globally via Bittrex Global but in the US this exchange provides services via Bittrex, an independent subsidiary of Bittrex Global. 

On 17 April 2023, The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that the body charged the Bittrex exchange, Bittrex Global & its co-founder William Shihara over unregistered national digital assets trade platform in the US.

Today we charged crypto asset trading platform Bittrex Inc. and its co-founder and former CEO William Shihara for operating an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency.https://t.co/kBsIFMp7ZA

— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) April 17, 2023

According to the SEC body, Bitrrex was providing services against Federal Securities law and found violation of 4 laws. 

This security regulatory body also claimed that OMG, Dash, Algorand, Monolith (TKN), Naga (NGC), and IHT Real Estate Protocol (IHT) are security assets and also Bittrex violated securities law by providing trading of these assets.

The SEC Enforcement Division Director Gurbir Grewal said the latest enforcement action against the Bittrex exchange is a message for other crypto companies which are providing services against securities laws. 

The Bittrex team also responded to this enforcement action and confirmed that in the past the Bittrex team approached the SEC agency many times to get information about any possible violation of securities law but the SEC body never provided any information.

pic.twitter.com/zqh5JHeBXb

— Bittrex (@BittrexExchange) April 17, 2023

Earlier this, Coinbase exchange CTO Paul Grewalaa passed a similar kind of statement in response to SEC’s Wells notice over particular crypto assets trading on the exchange & staking services.

Over the past 9 months, CB has met with the SEC more than 30 times, sharing details of our business to build a path to registration. During this time, the SEC hasn't given basically 0 feedback on what to change, or how to register. Instead, today we received a Wells notice. 2/15

— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) March 22, 2023

Bittrex to US Market

In March Bittrex exchange received a Wells notice from the SEC agency and after that exchange announced that it will quit the US crypto market by April of this year but before the end of this month Bittrex received enforcement action. 

Due to continued regulatory uncertainty, we have made the difficult decision to wind down our U.S. operations, effective April 30, 2023. All funds are safe and can be fully withdrawn immediately.

This does not affect customers of @BittrexGlobal https://t.co/MY4u7XLk9z

— Bittrex (@BittrexExchange) March 31, 2023

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