The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced Thursday that it has charged Cumberland DRW, a Chicago-based crypto trading firm, with various securities charges. In an announcement, the SEC said that Cumberland operated as an unregistered dealer in handling more than $2 billion worth of cryptocurrencies.
The complaint alleges that Cumberland traded “crypto assets that are offered and sold as investment contracts on third-party crypto asset exchanges.” The SEC complaint mentions five assets that the regulator considers to be securities, including Solana, Polygon, Cos
“Despite frequent protestations by the industry that sales of crypto assets are all akin to sales of commodities, our complaint alleges that Cumberland, the respective issuers, and objective investors treated the offer and sale of the crypto assets at issue in this case as investments in securities,” said Jorge G. Tenreiro, Acting Chief of the SEC’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit (CACU), in a statement.
“Cumberland profited from its dealer activity in these assets without providing investors and the market with the important protections afforded by registration,” Tenreiro added.
Cumberland did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s questions, but posted a statement on Twitter (aka X) that it wouldn’t be “making any changes to our business operations or the assets in which we provide liquidity” due to the lawsuit.
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