The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Monday that it’s charging Bittrex, a crypto exchange, “for operating an unregistered national securities exchange, broker and clearing agency.”
The SEC is also charging Bittrex’s foreign entity for “failing to register as a national securities exchange in connection with its operation of a single shared order book” with its parent company.
In recent weeks we’ve seen the SEC take on Coinbase and Tron, not to mention Binance taking fire from a different American government agency (the CFTC). Suffice it to say that after lagging behind the crypto market’s growth, government regulators are stepping up to the plate.
Reactions vary to the SEC’s recent actions. In the crypto community, there’s a generally held perspective that the U.S. government is being too heavy-handed in its enforcement actions; that its rules are either too vague or poorly fitting for web3-related assets and activity; and that regulators should work more closely with the industry to come up with new rules for what some consider to be a novel method of approaching the exchange of value.
The SEC disagrees. In a comment that should serve as a clear portent of future …
