SEC now taking aim at crypto exchange Bittrex

The stock market watchdog SEC multiplies the actions against the crypto platforms and accuses today Bittrex for offering products regulated products at United States without having previously registered with its services.

On Monday, the Security Exchange Commission of the United States announced to launch proceedings against Bittrex, a large American crypto exchange founded in 2014 in Seattle.

US regulator blames Bittrex and its co-founder and ex-boss William Shihara for operating an unregistered national securities exchange, broker-dealer and clearinghouse.

Today’s action, once again, makes clear that crypto markets suffer from a lack of regulatory compliance, not a lack of regulatory clarity,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said in a statement.

While a number of U.S. crypto industry players, including Coinbase, believe the rules surrounding cryptocurrencies lack clarityGary Gensler believes that existing laws cover “most of the activity in the crypto markets.”

“As alleged in our complaint, Bittrex and the issuers it worked with knew the rules that applied to them, but went to great lengths to circumvent them by directing issuer-applicants to ‘scrub’ information indicating that certain crypto-assets were securities,” the SEC chief added.

No doubt feeling the pinch and decrying the lack of regulatory clarity in early April, Bittrex announced the upcoming closure of its operations in United States. In its complaint, the SEC alleges that the crypto-currencies OMG, ALGO, DASH, TKN, IHT and NGC are securities.

In recent months, the regulatory agency has sued several large crypto companies such as exchange Kraken, stablecoin issuer Paxos, lender Nexo and exchange Gemini and its former partner Genesis.

The giant Coinbase recently received a well notice in which the SEC also accused it of violating securities laws.

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