On August 10, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stated that Bittrex Inc. and its former CEO William Shihara have to pay $24 Million for settlement of operating an unregistered exchange charges.
To resolve the legal charges, the crypto trading platform Bittrex has agreed to pay $14.4 million in disgorgement (the repayment of ill-gotten gains), $4 million in prejudgment interest, and $5.6 million in civil penalties, all agreements specified in the notice which is still dependent on court approval.
In April, the SEC took legal action against Bittrex and its co-founder, stating that it operates an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency.
Furthermore, the regulators claimed a separate enforcement action against Bittrex Global GmbH for “its operation of a single shared order book along with Bittrex.”
The SEC further claimed that Shihara allegedly collaborated with crypto asset issuers to list their tokens for trading on Bittrex’s platform to delete public statements because Shihara believed that it would lead a regulator to investigate those token offerings as securities.
“Today’s settlement makes clear that you cannot escape liability by simply changing labels or altering descriptions because what matters is the economic realities of those offerings,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.
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