The year-long investigation into BTC Trading, Corp has finally come to an end. BTC Trading, Corp was the company behind BTCT.co and litecoinglobal.com. Both sites offered. The SEC has fined BTC Trading, Corp. (BTCT.co), and Ethan Burnside for violating the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, and the Investment Company Act of 1940.

Burnside is being fined $58,387 for the profits and interest that he generated as well as a penalty of $10,000. Like Satoshi Dice’s founder Erik Voorhees, who was also fined by the SEC, Burnside is neither admitting nor denying the charges by paying the fines.

SEC Investigation Into BTC Trading, Corp Ends

The SEC first contacted Burnside in September of 2013, and their reports corroborated by user experiences tells us that the government-forced wind-down of BTC Trading Corp was well executed:

Beginning in September 2013, shortly after the Commission staff contacted Burnside, he began an orderly wind down of the operations of both websites. This included disabling the registration and trading functions of the websites while maintaining the users’ ability to request the withdrawal of their funds. Burnside provided the websites’ users with advance notice of the wind down and established procedures intended to prevent user losses. During the wind down period, users withdrew funds totaling approximately 200,000 litecoins and 20,000 bitcoins, which were held in virtual currency wallets maintained by each website. By October 31, 2013, both websites had ceased operating.

Many Bitcoiners remember the wilder wild west days of rampant unregistered securities. BTCT was created by Burnside shortly after the end of GLBSE, another unregistered securities platform. Just as BTCT listing was migrated from GLBSE, after the end of BTCT, many pass-throughs and other still-extant Bitcoin-related “securities” migrated to other platforms such as Bitfunder (no longer with us) or Havelock (still with us). Other sites that have gone dark due to possible SEC actions and investigations include mcxNow.

The full document by the SEC can be found here.

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