Bittrex Faces SEC Lawsuit for Operating Unregistered Securities Exchange: What You Need to Know
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On April 17th, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission officially charged cryptocurrency exchange, Bittrex, and former CEO, William Shihara, with “operating an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency”.
Bittrex’s international affiliate, Bittrex Global GmbH, was also hit with a charge for “failing to register as a national securities exchange in connection with its operation of a single shared order book”.
The SEC alleges that Bittrex earned $1.3 billion in revenue from transaction fees from crypto assets that were “offered and sold as securities”.
This lawsuit comes a few weeks after Bittrex announced they would be closing down operations in the United States due to “continual regulatory uncertainty”.
After the lawsuit was made official, Bittrex made another announcement on their website and specifically urged U.S. customers to withdraw their funds as soon as possible.
All Bittrex operations in the United States will cease on April 30th, so be sure you check out the announcements and get your assets off of the exchange in a timely manner.
Please note that this does not impact non-U.S. customers using Bittrex Global.
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