Bittrex Shuts Down US Crypto Exchange Due to Regulatory Environment

By Kevin • April 2, 2023 10:50 am • Comments

It looks like major crypto exchange Bittrex just announced that it would be shutting down all of its US operations as a result of the negative regulatory environment against crypto in the US.

The company announced that all customers had to withdraw their funds from the exchange by the end of the month if they are within the States.

However, the exchange will still continue to support all global regions on its global platform which indicates that the success of the company is not region dependent.

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The founder of Bittrex, Richie Lai, stated that it was not economically viable to continue the US operations.

The recent event does make sense considering that the US regulators have taken a very aggressive stance against crypto after the recent events that occurred over the past year.

Whether or not the actions are actually justified is a different matter.

DeCrypto.co reports:

“Regulatory requirements are often unclear and enforced without appropriate discussion or input, resulting in an uneven competitive landscape,” he said.

Founded in 2013, Bittrex is a small Seattle-based company. It is the 71st largest digital asset exchange, with a 24-hour trading volume of just $11.7 million, according to CoinGecko.

That’s less than even some decentralized exchanges, such as Uniswap, Pankcakeswap, and Orca.
Bittrex’s announcement comes as U.S. regulators launch perhaps the toughest crackdown on the crypto industry yet.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has hit a number of American crypto companies with fines—including popular Kraken last month.

As a result of the recent actions from the SEC, even Coinbase has decided to start setting up overseas operations where they revealed plans of setting up a global exchange.

Coinbase has been known to be one of the exchanges that had complied the most to SEC regulations and even they have still been targeted by the SEC when they received a Wells Notice recently.

This indicates that the crypto exchange industry may start to shrink in the near future if the SEC continues out its many enforcement actions.

Bittrex has not announced any plans to resume operations in the US and it is likely that it will not change until the regulatory environment changes.

This is not the first time that Bittrex has expressed discontent with regulations as it had previously been fined $29 million in the past for “apparent violations” of sanctions.

CoinDesk concludes:

“It’s just not economically viable for us to continue to operate in the current U.S. regulatory and economic environment,” said Bittrex co-founder and CEO Ritchie Lai in the statement.

“Regulatory requirements are often unclear and enforced without appropriate discussion or input, resulting in an uneven competitive landscape,” he continued. “Operating in the U.S. is no longer feasible.”

All customer funds are safe, said Lai, and are available to withdraw.

The closure does not affect Bittrex Global, which operates in Europe, Canada and South America, among other locales, and will remain open for trading.

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