Abra, a cryptocurrency platform, and its CEO, William Barhydt, have reached a settlement with the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation. As part of the settlement, Abra will return the assets held by its Oregon users and stop offering unregistered securities in the state. This marks another step in Abra’s withdrawal from the U.S. market.
Oregon is now the fifth state to take action against the companies within the Abra ecosystem. The state charged Abra with violating state securities laws related to its interest-bearing crypto depository accounts, Abra Earn and Abra Boost. As a result, Abra has been instructed to advise all account holders in Oregon to withdraw their crypto assets from the platform. If Abra successfully returns all assets to Oregon customers by April 25, it will not face any monetary penalties.
Currently, there are 167 Abra customers in Oregon with $32,387.14 on the platform. In February, the state of Iowa settled with Abra, and the company agreed to return $6,426.90 to its approximately 39 customers in the state. By meeting the conditions of the settlement by March 6, Abra managed to avoid a penalty of $461,610.14.
In September 2023, Maryland also took action against Abra on behalf of 162 Marylanders who had a total balance of $700,000. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown emphasized the importance of protecting consumers in his announcement.
Earlier, in January, Abra reached a settlement with the Texas State Securities Board, agreeing to repay the balances of state residents on its platform. This was the second action taken by Texas against Abra, with the first being an enforcement action in June 2023. The Texas agency discovered that Abra had around 1,600 state residents on its platform, with a balance of $1.8 million. Additionally, the agency claimed that Abra had been insolvent since March of that year, which coincided with the height of the banking crisis.
In April 2023, the California Commissioner of Financial Protection and Innovation issued a consent decree requiring Abra to close out the Earn accounts of Californians, which were worth $19 million.
Abra announced in a July blog post that it would be discontinuing its retail operations in the United States.
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