Crypto exchange Bittrex coughs up $53m to end claims of US sanctions busting

Bittrex will cough up $53 million after being accused of flouting US sanctions and breaking federal money laundering laws and other banking rules. Specifically, the cryptocurrency exchange will pay $24 million to settle allegations made by the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and $29 million to the …

[badflorist]

Corruption all around.

"Instead of utilizing widely available NSA backdoored transaction monitoring software..."

[Anonymous Coward]

“Did Business”

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile ..

Google Cloud now accepts crypto currencies because if there's a good rip off going, Google doesn't want to miss out.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: Meanwhile ..

Actually they accept payment in real money via an exchange who will convert your dodgy cryptobollock tokens for you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Meanwhile ..

Ah, a new place to launder your crypto coin gains. Wonderful.

[lglethal]

2 people trying to review 11,000 transactions a day. Yep that will be fine...

[I ain't Spartacus]

It's easy. You look for the transactions with the stripy jumper emojis...

[Michael Wojcik]

Ha! My gang use the dollar-sign-bag emoji.

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprise surprise surprise

Pay the fine/fee/bribe and nobody goes to jail. Ahh the rich life. Reminds me of a laptop once owned by an adult finger painter that took over his deceased brother's wife and daughter.

$53M fee for $263M in dirty dealing, less that 20% tax on crime. Got to keep them profitable for the next fines\fees\taxs\bribes. Don't want to kill your cash cow. (smarter than goog)

[druck]

Not a suspicious activity report but - instead of all of them

"Bittrex's failures created exposure to high-risk counterparties including sanctioned jurisdictions, darknet markets, and ransomware attackers."

If that isn't the entire point of a crypto exchange, what is?

[Mister Dubious]

Shrinkage

It turns out the $53 million is actually only $29 million. Fines totaling the larger amount were assessed, but "FinCEN said it would credit the fine to be paid to OFAC towards the total fine they imposed, meaning Bittrex will pay $29 million in total" according to Molly White of "Web3 Is Going Just Great."

Bittrex' owners can afford a few more beers than we'd hoped.

[Fifth Horseman]

Meths?

Here's me thinking Bittrex was the nasty tasting purple dye added to methylated spirit to deter Glaswegians from drinking it.