The latest research revealed that the British crypto investigation surged by 74 percent as the agency is now delving into 87 more cryptocurrency firms.
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has been scrutinizing the companies that are dealing in the crypto industry, especially those that caught with scamming investors. As per Financial Times, FCA investigated 50 companies a year prior and the latest report revealed that such investigation surged to 74 percent higher, FCA is now examining 87 in 2019.
The date was reportedly shared by David Heffron who is a partner at Pinsent Masons, a law firm. He hinted that the increasing investigation by FCA depicts how serious regulator strives to crack-down the bad players from the crypto market. He told FT;
“The rise in investigations reflects the FCA’s increasingly hands-on and no-nonsense approach to enforcing the law in the cryptocurrency market for cryptocurrency businesses acting lawfully these statistics will be encouraging – they want bad actors pushed out. The FCA’s crackdown on businesses operating on its regulatory perimeter will instill a degree of confidence that products reaching consumers are less likely to be scams.”
However, 87 investigations are both – early-stage inquiries and full-on law enforcement action. So far, FCA has been tracking the “get rich quick schemes” played by scammers to capture the growing crypto interest of the potential crypto community. While on one hand, FCA is following brutal measures to crack down the cryptocurrency scam, it directs the consumer to play safe in the emerging crypto industry on the other hand.
As such FCA is keeping the list of authorized crypto businesses with it which will be useful resource for investors to cross-verify the authenticity of the schemes they’re more likely to engage in. Also, in July this year, the regulator inked the definition of security tokens and stated it would fall under its supervision whereas cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin will not be treated as a security token.
Moreover, it’s worth noting that the regulator had earlier unveiled its plan of banning the crypto derivatives within UK. If FCA mulls crypto derivatives ban, it will keep retail investors away from accessing products like futures, options trading as well as exchange-traded notes (ETNs).
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