Bittrex to pay $24 million to settle with US SEC

The US SEC sued Bittrex Inc and its former CEO William Shihara in April, saying they operated an unregistered national securities exchange, broker and clearing agency

Crypto currency exchange Bittrex has agreed to pay $24 million to settle claims by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the crypto currency exchange failed to register with the agency, as per a filing in Seattle federal court on Thursday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Bittrex Inc and its former Chief Executive Officer William Shihara in April, saying they operated an unregistered national securities exchange, broker and clearing agency.

The Securities and Exchange Commission also contended that the exchange’s foreign affiliate, Bittrex Global GmbH, failed to register as a national securities exchange in connection with its operation of a single shared order book along with Bittrex.

Bittrex Inc filed for insolvency in May. The deal requires the firm and Bittrex Global to pay the $5.6 million fine and hand over $18.4 million in allegedly illegal profit 60 days after a liquidation plan is filed in the bankruptcy case.

The firms and Shihara agreed to an order barring them from breaching U.S. securities laws. They did not admit to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s allegations.

According to a Bittrex spokesperson, the company was “delighted” to have reached a settlement and would be able to say more after the court has approved the resolution.

The company had earlier rejected the claims that securities were traded on its platform. Bittrex Global has said it has no U.S. customers.

The Securities and Exchange Commission contended in its lawsuit that Shihara coordinated with crypto asset issuers looking to make their tokens available for trading on Bittrex’s platform to delete public statements that Shihara believed would lead regulators to probe those token offerings as securities.