The Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) of Belgium has added yet another firm to its crypto warning list - this time www.xtb-markets.com. With this update, the count of the companies on the warning list of the market watchdog has reached 121. According to the official announcement, the FSMA found the crypto Trading Platform ‘suspicious’ and advised potential investors not to respond to any offer made by the platform. “The principle remains the same: they offer you an investment they claim is secure, easy and very lucrative. They try to inspire confidence by assuring you that you don’t need to be an expert in Cryptocurrencies in order to invest in them,” the financial regulator stated. “They claim to have specialists who will manage your investments for you. You are told that your funds can be withdrawn at any time or that they are guaranteed. In the end, the result is always the same: the victims find themselves unable to recover their money!”
Fishing for fraud websites in a sea of companies
The FSMA is one of the few regulators around the world that maintains a list of suspicious platforms and companies offering financial schemes to investors. The regulator first issued the list in February 2018 with 20 names of potential fraudulent crypto trading platforms. The agency updates the list based on complaints from consumers who had responded to offers of investment in cryptocurrencies. These companies mostly operate within the country illegally, making it hard to flag them on a proactive basis. The list was updated last time in April when the regulator flagged seven crypto-related investment companies. Last month, Finance Magnates reported that the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) flagged seven unregulated websites, offering both forex and crypto-based investment schemes. Earlier this year, Germany's market watchdog BaFin also issued warnings against two cryptocurrency trading signals provider.
