Warning and status record

Bittrex Status and Official Warnings

Read Bittrex's documented status, named domains and official warnings with dated sources and practical next steps.

By the CoinReckon editorial desk · Published

Evidence snapshot: · Evidence updated 2026-10-19 · Methodology 1.3.

Documentary review. No deposit, trade, withdrawal or support test was performed for this page. Read the methodology.

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Choose your location to see its recorded access and ratings. GLOBAL covers the documented international route; it does not mean access in every country.

United States · Status record

Bittrex: recorded position

Status only - no numeric rating

  • ceased operations

Access and exclusions

Availability not established.

Bittrex sits in our warnings file, not our review file. The record behind this page is a status entry backed by US enforcement documents, so the question it answers is narrow: what did American authorities actually do, when, and what does that leave for a reader in the United States today.

Evidence here comes from a evidence record updated October 19, 2026 and imported October 20, 2026. Every date below is the date on the document or the event it describes, not a fresh check.

Current documented status

Our record lists Bittrex as a centralized exchange that has ceased operations, with that status dated from October 11, 2022, the day the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced two parallel enforcement actions against Bittrex, Inc. 4. The entry names no domains, because none of the official documents behind it name one. It also carries no claims process and no official contact, so this page has no recovery route to hand you. This is a status record, which means it is not a scored review and carries no CoinReckon rating. There is no live service left to evaluate on fees, custody or execution.

Which entity or domain the record names

Three names travel through these filings and they are not interchangeable. Bittrex, Inc. ran the US platform. Bittrex Global GmbH served customers outside the United States. William Hiroaki Shihara co-founded the company and was CEO from 2014 to 2019; the SEC named him as a control person, not as the operator of a separate venue. All three appear together in SEC Litigation Release No. 25817, issued August 29, 2023 3. Our record stores the brand name Bittrex and the claimed role of a centralized exchange, nothing more granular, and leaves the domains field empty. Anything live today using that name is not the company these documents describe.

Documented item Exact dated value or scope What it means in practice
Brand and claimed role Bittrex, recorded as a centralized exchange; record updated October 19, 2026 The entry covers this exchange brand only, not a similarly named site or app
Status Ceased operations, dated from October 11, 2022 Nothing to open an account with; signup guidance is out of scope
Legal entities named Bittrex, Inc., Bittrex Global GmbH and William Hiroaki Shihara, per SEC Litigation Release No. 25817 (August 29, 2023) The US and international arms were separate legal entities with separate obligations
Domains named in official documents None Treat any working "Bittrex" site as unrelated until an official document names it
Treasury settlements OFAC $24,280,829.20 and FinCEN $29,280,829.20, announced October 11, 2022 Penalties for compliance failures; the company was not added to a sanctions list
Funds guidance in this record No claims process, no official contact Any route to money runs through the bankruptcy court, not through us

Timeline of warnings and actions

  • February 2014 to December 2018. FinCEN's period of willful Bank Secrecy Act violations: an ineffective anti-money-laundering program and failures to file suspicious activity reports, with no SARs at all filed between February 2014 and May 2017, while staff manually reviewed up to $100 million in transactions a day 4.
  • 2014 to 2017. OFAC counted 116,421 apparent violations of sanctions programs. Names were screened against the SDN list, but IP screening for sanctioned jurisdictions only arrived around October 2017; a law-firm review of the orders puts customer transactions from sanctioned regions at roughly $263 million 5.
  • October 11, 2022. Parallel settlements with OFAC and FinCEN: $24,280,829.20 and $29,280,829.20, with the OFAC payment credited toward the FinCEN amount. Treasury described it as the largest OFAC action against a crypto platform to that date and the first parallel FinCEN and OFAC actions in the sector 4. Our record flags it at its top severity tier.
  • Around April 2023. The company announced it was winding down its US trading platform 1.
  • April 17, 2023. The SEC charged Bittrex, Inc., Bittrex Global GmbH and Shihara with operating an unregistered exchange, broker and clearing agency, and alleged that token issuers were asked to scrub price predictions and profit-expectation language before listing 1.
  • May 8, 2023. Bittrex filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware 3.
  • August 10 and 15, 2023. The SEC announced a settlement without admissions: $24 million joint and several, made up of $14.4 million in disgorgement, $4 million in interest and $5.6 million in penalties, plus permanent injunctions 2. Final judgments were entered August 15, 2023 3.

What the status means for US readers

Both tracks are federal. SEC and Treasury actions apply across the country, so a reader in Columbus and a reader in Buffalo are in the same position on the documents. Our record contains no separate New York State action against Bittrex, and the absence of a state file does not create or remove anything at the federal level; it just means the state layer is not part of this evidence.

Read the labels carefully, because they do different work. The SEC charged in April 2023 and settled in August 2023 without the defendants admitting or denying the allegations, which leaves the agency's claims unproven and the injunctions binding 23. Treasury's actions were consent orders with agreed payments 4. None of that put Bittrex on a sanctions list; the OFAC settlement was about the platform failing to block transactions from sanctioned jurisdictions, not about designating the company itself 4.

One inference worth refusing: SEC registration, had it existed, would not have been a safety stamp. Registration is a disclosure and supervision regime, never an endorsement of a venue or a token. You can see how CoinReckon assesses services for what we do and do not read into a filing.

Funds, claims and official guidance

Our record's funds guidance is empty on both fields: no claims process, no official contact. What the documents do show is that customer balances on the US platform went into the Delaware bankruptcy proceeding opened May 8, 2023, and the SEC has noted that it is also litigating in the bankruptcy court 3. The case number, the claims agent and any claims portal are not in this evidence record, so the place to look is the Delaware bankruptcy court docket itself.

Treat paid help with suspicion. Distributions in a bankruptcy move through the court, so there is no legitimate service that unlocks a frozen Bittrex balance for an upfront fee or a percentage on payout. The company's own published notice on official communication channels limited legitimate contact to its own email domains and stated that staff do not open contact on Telegram. Fraud attempts can be reported to IC3 and the FTC's fraud reporting site, and securities-related complaints to the SEC or your state securities regulator.

Practical next steps and evidence limits

What this record cannot tell you: whether creditor distributions were completed, how the bankruptcy ended, and whether any later motion changed the 2023 judgment. Those sit outside the imported snapshot. Before you act on anything bearing this brand, work through the five checks below.

  • Identity and geography. Confirm which entity a document, email or site refers to: Bittrex, Inc., Bittrex Global GmbH, or neither. No domain is named in the official record, so a matching name proves nothing.
  • Intended operation. If the operation is trading, deposits or withdrawals, stop. The platform ceased operations and nothing in this record supports an active service.
  • Documented limit. If the operation is a creditor claim, the limit is procedural: this evidence record has no case number, claims agent or deadline, so the docket is the source.
  • Custody boundary. Any balance once held by the exchange was custodial and is now an unsecured claim in a court process, not a wallet you can reach.
  • Next step. Preserve records first: account statements, deposit and withdrawal confirmations, transaction IDs, support tickets and any correspondence, with dates. Then verify procedure against the court docket or a filed document, not a message that found you.

Quick questions

Which Bittrex domain does the warning name? None. The SEC press releases, the litigation release and the Treasury release behind this record do not name a domain, so our domains field is empty and we add no lookalikes 1234.

Does the evidence record provide a recovery or claims route? No. Both funds-guidance fields are empty, which means no claims process, no official contact and no deadline from this record. The documented context is the Delaware bankruptcy proceeding, and its procedural details have to come from the docket 3.

Does an official warning establish every allegation as proven? No. The SEC's April 17, 2023 complaint was settled on August 10, 2023 without the defendants admitting or denying the allegations, and the court entered final judgments on August 15, 2023 23. The injunctions and the $24 million are binding; the underlying allegations were never tried.

If you came here holding an old balance, your next hour is better spent assembling dated records than searching for a working site. For anything current, browse all crypto service reviews or a related service profile, and see the rest of the category hub for entities in the same condition. Spotted a document we should add, including a bankruptcy case number? Send an editorial correction.

Sources

Also cited, third-party analysis: [5] Harris Beach Murtha, "Potential BSA/AML Roadmap - Crypto Exchange Bittrex Enforcement Actions" - www.harrisbeachmurtha.com/insights/potential-bsa-aml-roadmap-crypto-exchange-bittrex-enforcement-actions

General educational information, not personal investment, legal or tax advice. Crypto assets can lose value, and reading documents is not a guarantee of safety, access or recovery. This page carries no affiliate links or purchase incentives.