Fraud involving binary options, CFDs on cryptocurrencies sparks German Police concerns

Maria Nikolova

The warning is published less than a week after the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority unveiled its plans to introduce a ban on binary options.

The rising number of cases of online fraud involving binary options and CFDs on commodities, FX and cryptocurrencies have sparked the concerns of Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police Office). Earlier today, the Police, along with the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), published a special message to the public, warning about online investment scams.

In particular, the regulator and the police are concerned of the activities of scammers that lure their victims via the offer of “simple and safe” trading in binary options and CFDs on cryptos. The typical fraudsters do not explain how the trading exactly works and often provide investors with fake account statements so that they are misled to believe that they are making profits whereas, in fact, their money is usually transferred overseas by the fraudsters. The fraudulent entities most often are unauthorized to conduct any financial services business in Germany, the Police warn.

BaFin points out that when trading CFDs and binary options, there is always a high risk of loss. The regulator reminds the public that there is a ban on the offering of binary options and that there are restrictions on the offering of CFDs to retail investors.

Last week, BaFin presented its plans for a national prohibition on offering binary options to retail clients. The German supervisor is thus preparing for the expiry of the product intervention measure introduced by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

In particular, BaFin sees risks and thus considerable investor protection concerns in that binary options are complex and lack transparency. The regulator notes that, unlike other financial instruments, binary options are not traded on a market where prices result from supply and demand. Instead, it is the provider who determines the price, without its clients being able to understand or examine this. Due to the generally extremely short terms, it is exceedingly difficult for retail clients to accurately assess the risk-return profile.

Furthermore, binary option providers usually act as the direct counterparty to their clients’ trades. The interests of providers thus directly conflict with those of their clients. For instance, providers could manipulate the price of the underlying at expiry of the binary option or change the term of the binary option by seconds or milliseconds, so as to avoid having to pay out on the option contract.

Read this next

Retail FX

Prop firm The Funded Trader shuts down, claims relaunch in April

Prop trading firm The Funded Trader has ceased all operations, with claims for a relaunch in the near future.

Digital Assets

Ethereum-Based Tokenized Real Estate Platform USP Launches On Republic

How This Californian Startup Is Revolutionizing Real Estate Investment through Ethereum-Based Tokenization.

Digital Assets

Sui Spikes in Weekly DEX Volume, Joins Top 10 of All Blockchains

March DEX volume on Sui stands at over $2.88B – up more than 49% from February – with decentralized exchange Cetus and wholesale liquidity layer DeepBook leading.

Digital Assets

Prisma Finance suffers $10 million crypto exploit, attack ongoing

Liquid staking protocol Prisma Finance fell victim to a security exploit on March 28, resulting in nearly $10 million in Prisma mkUSD and wrapped stETH being stolen by hackers.

Digital Assets

Masa and LayerZero: Bridging Blockchains for Data Sovereignty

Masa Network is poised to revolutionize the personal data landscape with its upcoming launch as a cross-chain platform, making it accessible on a variety of blockchains right from the start.

Digital Assets

Big Time Generates over $100M in Revenue since Preseason

Innovative game developer Big Time Studios announces that its highly anticipated free-to-play multiplayer action/MMO RPG Big Time, has generated $100M in revenue. According to the team, players transacted a total volume of over $230M, without selling a single token.

Digital Assets

Centralized exchanges are 10 times more popular than DEXs in Western Europe

Western European traders are found to prefer centralized exchanges over decentralized ones as CEX traffic outpaces DEXs by a factor of ten.

Market News

Stock Market Analysis: Is NVDA Losing Its Leadership?

Since the beginning of the week, the S&P 500 Index (US500) has seen a modest increase of about 0.58%, whereas NVDA’s share price has experienced a decline of approximately 3.8%. This recent divergence raises concerns among Nvidia stock investors — could it signify a loss of NVDA’s market leadership?

Industry News

ESG: Australian regulator wins first greenwashing court case against Vanguard

Vanguard admitted that a notable portion of the securities within both the Index and the Fund did not undergo the promised ESG scrutiny.

<