AI summary of article:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged the cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex with violating federal securities laws in a lawsuit filed on Friday. The SEC alleges that Bittrex failed to register as a national securities exchange and did not follow appropriate anti-money laundering (AML) procedures. The lawsuit also claims that Bittrex allowed unregistered securities trading and failed to disclose information about its operations. Bittrex has responded by stating that it disagrees with the SEC's allegations and plans to defend itself vigorously in court. The exchange has faced regulatory scrutiny in the past, with several states denying it a license to operate due to concerns about its compliance practices.

According to the complaint against Bittrex, the SEC alleges omise go (OMG), algorand (ALGO), dash (DASH), tokencard (TKN), i-house token (IHT) and naga (NGC) are securities.

Pages 37-40 of the complaint letter describe Dash and get this: The letter - in all seriousness - names the fact that people are working to improve Dash as a payment network as an indicator that it is a security!

This is utterly ridiculous, because the same exact thing can be said about Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency that is being actively developed!

Definitely read those pages for yourself. You'll feel dumbfounded beyond any redemption.

It appears as though the SEC is suffering from dementia. To refresh their memory:

SEC says Ether isn’t a security, but tokens based on Ether can be

Spoiler: Dash is not based on Ether

SEC chairman: Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are not securities

Spoiler: Dash is a direct fork of Bitcoin as easily proven by looking at the Bitcoin Forks list on Github. The description in the letter also states that Dash is forked from Bitcoin. To this day Dash incorporates updates, fixes and improvements from the original Bitcoin codebase.

A quote from the Dash community Q&A from 2018:

How is Dash going to handle the regulatory crackdown coming due to it being marketed as an investment in a common enterprise (triggering the Howey test)?

Dash is not being marketed as an investment and there is no enterprise selling it, so there is no way it can be considered a security using the criteria in the Howey test.

Further, in the past some critics claimed that the Masternode system somehow makes Dash a security. The SEC never stated anything of the sorts, but to debunk this false claim, a quick explanation, for those wondering:

Running a Masternode requires a collateral of 1000 Dash. But that collateral can be sold at any time. It is not "locked" and the owner is never "stuck" with it. It's no different from voluntarily holding any amount of any other cryptocurrency. The only purpose the collateral serves is to create an incentive for the holder to vote and act in the best interest of the network. And the only way to receive a profit off that collateral is to provide services to the network, otherwise that Masternode will be banned and not paid. As such the network is buying something (network service) from the nodes and paying something (Dash) in return. It's literally a commercial exchange like buying coffee or bread. Therefore it can under no circumstances be considered a "security".

Finally an article from 2019 where DCG made the above abundantly clear towards the SEC:

DCG in face to face meeting with SEC - Reiterating how Dash cannot reasonably be considered a security

Edit:

Under https://www.dash.org/regulatory/ DCG states:

The status of Dash as “not a security” has been validated by many entities, most recently the Crypto Rating Council which provided the best possible score of 1.0, equivalent to the score for Bitcoin. The score takes into account various points within the Howey Test to conclude that Dash has few characteristics that are consistent with being a security.