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Cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex has announced it will cease operations and permanently close.

The cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex, which went bankrupt this year in May, announced that trading on the platform would be stopped on December 4. After this date, users will only be able to withdraw their own funds. The statement also said that replenishing an account on the exchange may result in loss of funds. There is no deadline for withdrawing funds from existing deposits yet, but exchange representatives advise doing this as quickly as possible.

Bittrex was founded in 2014 by software engineers who worked for Amazon and Microsoft. In 2017, it was the largest American crypto exchange and the third largest in the world. In 2019, Bittrex split into two platforms – international and American, significantly reducing trading volume on the latter. Bittrex’s US unit filed for bankruptcy on May 8, after the SEC sued Bittrex and its co-founder, former CEO William Shikhar, on April 17. The regulator said the marketplace operated as an unregistered securities exchange and brokerage and clearing agency from 2017 to 2022, generating at least $1.3 billion in revenue for the company.

In mid-May, Bittrex asked the court to allow customers to take back their assets without the cost and delay of legal proceedings. But in June, US authorities appealed the exchange’s plans, saying they were “unlawful.” In July, the Florida Office of Financial Regulation (OFR) accused Bittrex of violating state laws and filed a complaint against the company for fraud that occurred before its bankruptcy. The court documents noted that the platform mixed client assets with working capital and also ignored some of the liabilities.

In September 2021, the Bank of Russia added the Bittrex exchange to the list of companies with identified signs of illegal activity in the financial market. The official website of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation reports that the platform has signs of a financial pyramid. The exchange, among other things, provided services to users from Crimea and at the end of last year was fined $24 million by US authorities for violating sanctions.

The carefully crafted plan to create a new crypto services business from the remains of Celsius faces difficulties in the mutual exchange of information between the SEC, Celsius’ Committee of Creditors and the investment company Fahrenheit, which received the right to issue shares in the new venture after a competition in May.

The SEC’s request for more information has sparked discussions among stakeholders, and the committee is now tasked with deciding how to proceed. Fahrenheit, which includes Arrington Capital, U.S. Bitcoin Corp. and Proof Group, received court approval for Celsius’ bankruptcy recovery plan earlier this month, emerging from Celsius’ July 2022 Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection that revealed a $2 billion balance sheet deficit. Judge Martin Glenn of the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York confirmed on November 9 that Celsius’ creditors overwhelmingly approved the bankruptcy plan on September 27.

Under Celsius’ approved bankruptcy recovery plan, approximately $2 billion in Bitcoin and Ether will be distributed to Celsius’ creditors, along with equity in the newly created entity (NewCo). The company intends to begin paying compensation to creditors by the end of the year. NewCo plans to operate and expand Celsius’ bitcoin mining operations, list Ethereum, liquidate other illiquid assets and explore new business opportunities, according to the lawsuit.

Against the backdrop of such trends, one of the legitimate and stable forms of investing in cryptocurrency mining is the ASTL investment project, which allows investors to have the opportunity to directly invest fiat and cryptocurrency assets into stable passive income, which obviously exceeds inflation expectations and is not subject to any sanctions, blocking or confiscation. The ASTL project is a simple and elegant solution for potential investors – an investment in the development of the real sector of a diversified portfolio of cryptocurrencies, with a fairly high APR (up to 14%) with payments in stablecoin (USDT) and the possibility of a full return on investment through the subsequent sale of accrued ASTL tokens on leading crypto exchanges . Details can be found at https://astl.world

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