By Hannah Lang
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged crypto market maker Cumberland DRW on Thursday with acting as an unregistered dealer for more than $2 billion in crypto assets, the agency said in a statement.
The SEC said that Cumberland has acted as an unregistered dealer since March 2018 by buying and selling crypto assets that the regulator deemed to be securities and trading them as investment contracts on third-party crypto exchanges.
“The federal securities laws require all dealers in all securities to register with the Commission, and those who operate in the crypto asset markets are no exception,” said Jorge G. Tenreiro, acting chief of the commissions crypto assets and cyber unit.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Cumberland called the charges “incredibly frustrating and disappointing.”
“Despite (SEC) Chairman (Gary) Gensler’s call to just ‘come in and register,’ Cumberland has for years been expressly prohibited from using its now-dormant registered broker-dealer for crypto asset activity. We cannot comply with rules that do not exist or a framework that regulators are interpreting to prohibit trading in natively issued crypto assets,” the spokeswoman said.
The SEC has argued that most cryptocurrency tokens are securities and subject to its registration rules, while many crypto firms have disputed that and accused the regulator of overreach.
The SEC is locked in legal battles with a number of crypto platforms including Coinbase , Binance and Kraken, all of which argue that crypto assets – unlike stocks and bonds – do not meet the definition of securities.