Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Israel, eToro is a world-renowned online investment and trading platform that provides investors with trading services for a variety of financial products such as stocks, currencies, commodities, and cryptocurrencies. Due to its easy-to-understand and convenient operation, It attracts a large number of investors around the world and has as many as 30 million users , but it has attracted SEC investigations.
SEC settles with eToro
The SEC issued an announcement on the 12th stating that since 2020, eToro has operated as a broker and clearing institution, providing U.S. customers with the ability to trade crypto asset securities through eToro’s online trading platform, but eToro has not complied with the registration of federal securities laws. Require.
eToro USA LLC has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle charges that it operated a crypto-asset trading platform without a registered brokerage and clearing agency. As a condition of the settlement, eToro agreed to cease violating relevant federal securities laws and will only provide limited crypto-asset trading.
In the future, eToro’s US customers will only be able to trade Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Ethereum (ETH) on its platform. As for other crypto assets, eToro will provide customers with sales within 180 days of the SEC order. Function.
According to the statement , eToro will no longer support AAVE, ALGO, BAT, ADA, LINK, COMP, DASH, MANA, DOGE, ENJ, EOS, ETC, MIOTA, LTC, MKR, NEO, MATIC, XRP, XLM, SHIBxM, Trade XTZ, TRX, UNI, YFI and ZEC.
SEC Enforcement Division Gurbir Grewal stated that eToro removed investment contract tokens from its platform and chose to comply with regulations and operate within the existing regulatory framework. This not only strengthens the protection of investors, but also provides other cryptocurrency intermediaries with Provide a way.
The SEC has always maintained that most cryptocurrencies are securities and need to comply with its registration rules, but many cryptocurrency companies are dissatisfied with this. Several cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken are involved in legal disputes with the SEC. These platforms Both believe that, unlike stocks and bonds, cryptoassets do not meet the definition of securities.
etoro response: Global business will not be affected
eToro said that the settlement agreement has little impact on its global business. Outside the United States, eToro users will continue to trade more than 100 crypto assets. As a global multi-asset trading and investment platform, eToro will continue to achieve strong growth and continue to Committed to becoming a listed company in the future:
While there is already a clear regulatory framework for crypto-assets in our home markets of the UK and Europe, we believe we will see a similar framework in the US in the near future and once the framework is in place we will look to enable crypto-assets that comply with this framework trade.
