Binary Options: Where it really belongs – Opinion

Ever since its establishment, FinanceFeeds has maintained that binary options is not a financial markets product.

It was founded by, and is operated by affiliate lead marketers and gambling site owners, and has absolutely no connection whatsoever to electronic trading.

The litany of fraudulent activity that has emanated from the OTC binary options sector recently, attracting the attention of law enforcement agencies, national governments and financial markets regulators worldwide has mushroomed, casting a very unpleasant shadow over the genuine electronic trading industry to which it bears no resemblance.

Today, Barry Davies, founder at Optiopus, puts forward his opinion on why binary options should be classified as a gaming product, under what he considers to be the “Candy Crush model” , and should never be regarded as a financial markets environment.

Over to you, Barry.

After seeing how the binary market has evolved and most importantly the direction that it has taken, I have come to the conclusion that binary options should be situated in the gaming space as a fun method of entertainment and not as a financial product.

A few years ago some gaming site and online casino operators tried to introduce binary options which they positioned as a financial product, as a add on feature to there existing casino suite that at the time included casinos, poker sites and sports betting sites. The background of this bears absolutely no relation whatsoever to financial services or investing.

From my discussions with these companies over the last few years, their initial feedback has always been “lets try to cross sell our data”, but their issues were how the product could be positioned next to their gaming products, thus eventually they dropped this from the suite of products and made it into dedicated binary options which purported to be something that it is not.

In conjunction with these gaming companies that introduced this product, the binary options market exploded with bucket shop style brokers entering the market very aggressively and attempting to sell the binary options product as a legitimate financial product, which only served to dupe customers all over the world as we all know the platforms are rigged in favor of the brokers and their associated brands.

Now, here we are in a situation in which the binary market is at tipping point, as it has caused untold damage to many financial markets globally, resulting in the ruined reputation of online trading, advertising bans in many countries and blanket prohibitions of all OTC derivatives on, in some cases, a national basis.

It has created such damage that even if genuine binary options brokerages with very well recognized regulatory standing (such as the exchange traded derivatives in the US), enter the market, the trust is not there anymore.

As person who started his career in the gaming industry and experienced the binary options market in terms of a client and as a marketeer, I decided to build a platform Optiopus.com – for the client and only client in which users can join with no fear of being duped out of their hard earned cash.

Instead, we believe that it is a gaming product and should provide users with a means to interact via a social map, trade binary options, play games, join a community and win prizes.

In conclusion, we need to completely shake up the binary options industry and position it where it really belongs, that being firmly in the gaming sector.