- Digital asset trading platform Bittrex filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
- Bittrex Global will not be impacted by the change.
- Today’s news comes three weeks after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Bittrex and its former CEO William Shihara for operating an unregistered exchange, broker, and clearing agency.
U.S. digital asset trading platform Bittrex filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday. The company’s international operation, Bittrex Global, will not be impacted by the change.
Seattle-based Bittrex shut down in the U.S. on April 30, but has asked the bankruptcy court to allow it to re-open temporarily so that it can return crypto assets to U.S. customers who were unable to withdraw their funds prior to the April 30 closure.
Today’s bankruptcy filing comes after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Bittrex and its former CEO William Shihara for operating an unregistered exchange, broker, and clearing agency on April 17. Specifically, the agency alleged that Shihara encouraged crypto asset issuers to delete public statements that could lead regulators to investigate those token offerings as securities.
Bittrex has denied the SEC’s allegations that its digital assets are securities or investment contracts.
Unfortunately for the crypto world, the news of a digital asset trading platform shutting down in the U.S. is not shocking. Bittrex’s U.S. shutdown and bankruptcy follow the demise of FTX, Celsius, Voyager, and BlockFi– all of which have taken place in the past year. One reason decentralized finance (DeFi) companies operating in the U.S. are becoming an endangered species is because of the ambiguous regulatory environment in the U.S.
The SEC has not firmly laid out rules for crypto companies and, based on the fines it has issued, is making it clear that crypto firms are not as welcome in the U.S. as they are in other geographies.
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