The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Cumberland DRW LLC acted as a dealer without being registered when trading $2 billion of cryptocurrencies. 

The Chicago-based company, which calls itself a "liquidity provider, a risk taker" and a latency-sensitive trading firm," was charged on Thursday for conducting itself as an "unregistered dealer," the SEC said in a statement. 

"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, and Cumberland profited from its dealer activity in these assets without providing investors and the market with the important protections afforded by registration," said Jorge G. Tenreiro, acting chief of the SEC’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, in a statement.

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