The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has named six altcoins securities in a complaint against Bittrex. The exchange had been served with a Wells Notice.
The Bittrex exchange is the latest target of the SEC in its battle against crypto businesses.
The regulators also mentioned OMG Network (OMG), Dash (DASH), Algorand (ALGO), Monolith (TKN), NAGA (NGC), and IHT Real Estate Protocol (IHT) as securities in a lawsuit filed against Bittrex Inc., Bittrex Global, and William Hiroaki Shihara.
The SEC alleges that Bittrex and its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), William Shihara, operated an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency.
The price of OMG roughly fell by 1.5%, DASH by 1.2%, ALGO by 2%, and NGC by 6.5% after the SEC announcement.
Gensler Replies to Lack of Regulatory Clarity Statements
The SEC chair Gary Gensler said, “Today’s action, yet again, makes plain that the crypto markets suffer from a lack of regulatory compliance, not a lack of regulatory clarity.”
Gensler also added, “As alleged in our complaint, Bittrex and issuers that it worked with knew the rules that applied to them but went to great lengths to evade them by directing issuer-applicants to ‘scrub’ offering materials of information indicating that certain crypto assets were securities.”
The statement comes as industry stakeholders have been calling out the lack of regulatory clarity in the U.S.
Bittrex Wants to Fight SEC for Settlement
Maria informed that Bittrex received a Wells Notice from SEC, while it was wrapping up operations from the U.S. in March. However, he was unsure if the regulatory body would take the matter to court.
BeInCrypto reported that the exchange would not hold back from fighting SEC to “a reasonable settlement offer.”
On March 29, the SEC took similar actions against Beaxy exchange, a day after it announced to shut down operations.
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