The latest crypto firm by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is reportedly planning to fight back in court. Oliver Linch, the Chief Executive of Bittrex Global, has stated his company’s plans to fight against the allegations leveled by the securities regulator last month.
Bittrex CEO: The SEC Is Mistaken
In a recent interview with CoinDesk, Bittrex CEO Oliver Linch revealed that his company plans to vigorously defend against the charges brought by the SEC. According to Linch, the securities regulator is mistaken in its decision to charge Bittrex, its former CEO and an associated platform, with violation of local securities law.
The SEC sued Bittrex, its former CEO Bill Shihara, and Bittrex Global earlier this month, for allegedly operating an unregistered exchange, broker, and clearing agency. The regulatory agency also charged the exchange’s foreign affiliate Bittrex Global, for failing to register as a national securities exchange. The SEC alleged that the foreign affiliate catered to clients in the United States by operating a single shared order book with the U.S. exchange.
Speaking on the alleged shared order book, Linch believes that the SEC hasn’t offered a sufficient explanation as to what the underlying issue is. “We think that they’re mistaken in the way they conceive of it legally and in terms of facts,” he added. The CEO further revealed that the regulator did not allow his company to explain the facts of the matter before getting sued.
“Bittrex was an entirely separate legal entity and only provided services in the U.S. and only served U.S. customers. And they’re the ones that have had to shut down their operations… Global continues on providing the services to rest-of-world clients as it ever has.”
Oliver Linch, Bittrex Global
The complaint filed by the SEC on April 17, 2023, alleged that between 2017 and 2022, the crypto exchange generated at least $1.3 billion in revenues through transaction fees from investors while offering services as an unregistered exchange. Furthermore, the SEC alleged that the former CEO worked with crypto asset issuers who wanted to get their tokens listed, to scrub “problematic statements” from their offering materials to avoid attention from regulators.
